


See How They Run: the Second Year of the Zombie Apocalypse

by Chrononautical



Series: Rise, Run, Survive [2]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-28 06:46:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8435596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrononautical/pseuds/Chrononautical
Summary: It took a year for civilization to fall apart when the dead stopped staying dead. Derek doesn't know how long it will take to put his family back together, but he won't stop until he does.





	1. The Start

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second part of an ongoing series, the first part being See How They Rise, Reid's perspective on the rise of the living dead and the fall of civilization. If you'd like to start here, please do. Morgan recaps the basic situation in the first chapter.

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” - Jack Kerouac

Derek knew that his choice had been made ten months ago. Communication had been spotty, but they were still getting reports at that point. They knew undead were swarming the streets of Chicago. Derek had known then that he had a choice to make. He’d chosen his duty. There had been options. Garcia offered to find him a ride. “It won’t be the jet, beloved, but the military moves troops. For a star like you, I can swing a first class flight to O’Hare.” Considering that all commercial air traffic had already been grounded for weeks, it had been an incredible offer. Reid had even offered to go with him. 

“I’m not the most valuable field agent per se, but I can compute traffic patterns on the fly. If you actually let me navigate for once, I can help your family get out of the city in record time.” 

Even Hotch had his back. Derek wouldn’t have had to go AWOL as so many people with a duty did during those first few crisis filled months. A leave of absence would have been granted. That had been the time to go to his family, but instead Derek had chosen his duty. He’d still had hope that they could turn the tide and save the day as they had done so many times before. No one had anticipated how bad things would get. So he stayed in DC to do his job, because he knew that if everyone who had a job to do went running home to momma, the cities would fall. And then the cities did fall, and they lost all contact with the Chicago field office. 

Giving up hope had been necessary. Clinging to an unrealistic fantasy about his family fighting their way out when so many others were lost divided his focus. Distractions weren’t something they could afford when the whole human race was struggling just to survive. So he put it behind him. There had been a time to choose his family, and he’d chosen his team. DC was such a hotbed of infection that the zombies swarming out of there had wandered down to Quantico regularly in their mindless compulsion to find humans to bite. Chicago would be worse by about two million people. 

Derek checked the basement of the abandoned farm house, definitively clearing the place. The windows were boarded up and the barn had been empty. Obviously the family of four in the smiling pictures on the mantelpiece had survived long enough after the initial attacks to take some action. There was no sign of them in the house, and no indication that anyone had been through in months. It was as good a place as any for the team to hole up and rest. 

“We’re good,” he called as he trudged back up the stairs. 

“All clear here,” Hotch shouted down from the attic. 

Exhausted, Derek dropped to the dusty living room couch and propped his eyes open while the rest of the team got to work. 

Garcia and Freeman stashed the SUVs in the barn where they wouldn’t be spotted if the controlling, narcissistic general from their last official posting sent out planes to do a flyover. Zombies were more than enough to deal with, and Derek hoped that they wouldn’t have to fight good marines working for a bad guy on top of everything. The man had been obsessed with JJ, obsessed enough to kill her husband Will. He likely wouldn’t take kindly to the loss of Freeman, either. She’d been his right hand and she was carrying his child, for all that she’d been forced into the situation by a stark lack of options. Power and control. General Smith had all the hallmarks of the kind of man they’d hunted before the world fell to pieces. There was no sense in taking chances. 

Out in the yard, JJ was settling the boys. Jack and Henry bounced around like nothing could keep them down, sword fighting with sticks and somersaulting dramatically. Derek had the impression that they’d done a lot of sleeping in the car, but JJ was able to corral them and herd the dynamic duo into the house. Upstairs on the second floor, Reid and Park were joking about bed bugs as they changed the dusty sheets for well cleaner things out of the linen closet. 

Hearing Reid laugh was good. It hadn’t been a common sound over the last year. Park was smart, a scientist with multiple degrees, just like Reid. Pretty, too. Slender, with straight black hair, dark eyes, and a porcelain complexion, she looked like an asian doctor sent straight from central casting. A little short for him, maybe, but that didn’t matter if Reid liked her. Given an one hour deadline to collect anything he needed before they ran for their lives from the general’s oppressive command, Reid chose the good doctor and her go bag. Clearly she liked him too, since she’d offered to follow him to the grave. 

Derek carefully checked the safety on his gun, set it on the table, and leaned more heavily against the back of the sofa, the smell of moldy, neglected furniture filling his nostrils. He was so tired. It hadn’t even been sixteen hours since Reid had aimed a gun at his own temple. It didn’t help to know that he’d been doing it for the team. Doing it to prove a point to Freeman about how far they would go to escape. The fact that he’d convinced her didn’t seem to matter. All Derek could see when he closed his eyes for even a second was Reid with that gun in his hand. Ten months ago, Derek had chosen his team over his family, and he wasn’t going to pretend that Reid hadn’t been a factor in that choice. Reid was one of the last good things in Derek’s life, but he didn’t seem to be hanging on as tightly as Derek was. 

He looked at Hotch on the other end of the couch. The man was obviously as exhausted as Derek felt. Both of them had spent the last fifteen hours behind the wheel, most of that driving done in the dark on hazardous roads. First shift in the beds upstairs belonged to the two of them, and Derek wasn’t going to say anything to rock the boat before then.

“Hey Hotch, man, we aren’t stopping here for long, right?”

“A day will let us know if we’re being tracked by air. With all the backtracking and re routing we had to do to avoid major population centers last night, we barely managed three hundred miles. If the general has his planes fly a standard grid pattern today, we should hear evidence of it. Then we can act accordingly.” 

“Makes sense.” Derek knew he should stop there. Derek was going to stop there. “So we’ll be heading out tomorrow morning around sunrise.”

“As long as we don’t see or hear evidence of pursuit.” 

“Right. So I was thinking, man. Maybe we could head west for a while.” 

Hotch blinked. “I understand your feelings, Morgan, but East Allegheny’s only thirty miles north of here.” 

JJ’s head snapped up from diligently cleaning the kitchen counter so she could make the boys something to eat there. Clearly that meant something to her, but it took a long time to click for Derek. 

“Small town Pennsylvania. That where you’re from?” 

“Yeah,” she said. “But Hotch, if you’d told me that was where we were heading I would have cautioned against it. I know it isn’t a major population center, but it’s still going to be dangerous. We can’t risk taking the boys into a town.” 

Hotch laughed, a quick, dry gasp. “We never talked about it.” He sounded surprised. “We were compartmentalizing, working together so seamlessly, that I forgot we never mentioned it out loud. Our plans, for what we would do if we didn’t have a duty. My plans, I guess.” 

“So tell us the plan, Hotch,” Derek said, so focused on his boss that he barely noticed Reid and Park come up behind him. Garcia and Freeman hovered at the front the door. Even Jack and Henry had stopped to listen, though that was more about Jack than about the little blonde boy bouncing on his heels. 

“Most of us still have family to wonder about. JJ’s parents in East Allegheny just happen to be closest. I was lucky, I guess.” His eyes flicked to Jack, who immediately looked down at his sneakers. “I know that Sarah, my inlaws, and my mother didn’t make it out of DC. I know that for a fact.” Derek had been with him when they saw the bodies, so he knew how hard it must have been for Hotch to say as much in his deadpan, matter of fact way. 

Hotch, however, didn’t pause. He just kept laying it out for the team. “But Sean’s latest girlfriend was a NYU professor with a cabin in the Catskills. We won’t go anywhere near New York, but I’d like to check there before I give up on him entirely. If he survived the first wave without coming to me or checking on Mom, that’s where he’ll be. After that, Chicago. We can’t all go in. The boys will slow us down too much. I was thinking a team of three. Obviously you’ll take point given your knowledge of the terrain. JJ and I can back you up. Reid and Penelope will stand guard on the boys at a secure location. We’ll do the same thing in Las Vegas, though obviously Reid will take point there. One of us will stay back with the boys, and hopefully a few of our other family members, ensuring that even if the point team is lost there, at least one field certified agent remains to protect the civilians.”

“There’s no point,” Reid said softly and Derek’s heart broke a little. “We don’t need to go to Las Vegas.” 

“No point?” Hotch raised an eyebrow at Reid.

“My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic being held in an institution that definitely succumbed to the infection. There is next to no chance that she made it out alive. Even if she did, she would have been on her own for the last year. She forgets to feed herself. She doesn’t notice injuries and isn’t capable of treating them properly, which means she’s far more likely to get a more ordinary, if still fatal, infection. There’s no way she survived for the last year and if she did we have absolutely no hope of tracking her down.”

“And you’re speaking in the present tense,” Hotch said, shutting Reid up. “So we’ll go to Vegas. That’s as far as my plan goes. Hopefully we’ll find other survivors and a safer place to settle. If not, we’ll make one. Garcia, I wasn’t certain about you. I know you don’t have any living family, but if there was a friend or an ex boyfriend you wanted to look up?” The open ended question was unusual for Hotch, but it was probably just exhaustion making him sound like he hoped the answer would be no. Derek was grateful that tracking down their families had apparently been the plan all along, but it sounded like a long ass road trip through incredibly difficult terrain. He wasn’t in a hurry to add stops. Getting to Vegas through the desert was going to be enough of a nightmare. If Garcia wanted to go all the way to California, they might be in trouble. 

“Emily,” Garcia said. “I know there’s no way to do it. We can’t just fly to Europe and I haven’t heard from her in months. Even when she was reporting in on our back channel, she was bouncing around so much I couldn’t predict her movements from one day to the next. So I guess I don’t have anyone to look for, but maybe we can put a thought for her on the back burner? That way, if any of us think of a way to look for her that has even a tiny chance of success we still have her on the agenda.” 

“Absolutely.” Hotch’s voice was a lot warmer than it usually was when he addressed the team. Then again, they weren’t really a team anymore. Now that they were officially AWOL, they couldn’t be called anything but family. “I think we’d all like to meet up with Prentiss if we can. I’ll do my best to think of something.” 

Park cleared her throat. All eyes went to her. “My grandparents have a farm in Ohio. My mother was in Atlanta with me, so I know she didn’t make it, but my grandparents wanted to retire to the middle of nowhere. They’re pretty far from any major cities, and I wonder.” 

“Of course we’ll check,” Hotch said. “If they’re alive, we’ll offer them every assistance whether or not they want to join us on the road. And that goes more generally, too. I know we’ve had a bad experience with the Smith command, but we are still trained public servants. If we find other survivors in need of aid, we will provide it.” 

“Thank you.” Park was demur. Gentle in a way Reid probably appreciated. Unlikely to push him around or get on his nerves by starting a prank war. Derek forced himself to look through the gaps in the boarded up window, watching the sunshine on the autumn leaves. 

“I don’t have anyone left,” Freeman said. There was nothing hesitant about her. She joined the conversation as though she expected to be included. Derek liked that about her, but he didn’t look away from the window. “My father and I were the only ones around for the outbreak. After he got infected, I put him down myself.” 

“I’m so sorry,” Spencer said, his voice full of sympathy and sincerity. “That must have been awful.” 

Derek could imagine it. Freeman standing tall while the body of her father came after the only prey available, his own daughter. The dead didn’t walk like anything natural. They shuffled and lurched, a mix of slow shambling and sudden lunges. Morgan didn’t have to see much to recognize it through the small gap in the boarded up window. Snatching his gun from the table he pushed Garcia all the way into the house as he ran past her. Flipping off the safety, he put one slug into the leg of the little girl on the porch. Two in the mother as she lurched up the steps. Two in the father as he dragged himself across the grass. By that time JJ was there, managing perfect headshots on the little boy and a fifth zombie that Morgan didn’t recall from the family photographs in the living room. He’d probably been the vector for the family’s initial infection. 

“We didn’t check the grainery,” Hotch said, gesturing to the broken open door in the side of the silo, finishing the one legged girl with an almost casual head shot. 

“It was locked from the outside,” Reid said. “Someone must have trapped them in there. They wouldn’t have gone to extreme measures to break out until they sensed human prey nearby.” 

“Sloppy,” Hotch said, looking down at the now fully dead family. Whether he was referring to Morgan’s aim or their failure to check, he was right to criticize. “We need sleep. JJ, do you mind?” 

“Of course not, Hotch. You and Morgan get some rest. Garcia, if you can make sure the boys stay inside, I’d appreciate it. Reid, ladies, let’s glove up and take care of these bodies.”

Morgan was grateful to be dismissed so thoroughly. The guiding hand Hotch placed on his shoulder, turning him back toward the house, was firm and steady. Morgan tried to emulate him, but the shot of adrenaline after a long night on the run with a car full of people depending on his vigilance and precision driving was way too much. Holstering his gun, he balled his hand into a fist to stop the shaking. Hotch noticed. It would take more than one night of sleep deprivation to keep Hotch from noticing something that blatant. 

“Just tired,” he mumbled as they went upstairs together. 

“I know,” Hotch said easily. “I’m tired, too.” 

It wasn’t enough. Derek felt desperate and defensive. He was supposed to be the one who could keep it together. Maybe he was a year late, but he was finally headed to Chicago to check on his mother and sisters. The bed he fell into had blue Star Wars sheets and a unicorn wearing a tutu on the pillow. Derek didn’t need to know that the little girl he’d failed to put down easily had interests in common with Reid. Derek didn’t need to think about Reid with a gun to his head, or Reid downstairs with Park, or Reid burning an infected body and what would happen if he cut his hand on something while he was doing it. 

Curling up on a dead child’s bed in rural Pennsylvania, Derek didn’t need to lie awake wishing Reid was at his side, but he did.


	2. The Road

“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what’s not there anymore.” - Robin Hobb

East Allegheny was bad. Bad enough that Derek wished he and Hotch had taken their chances and left JJ with Reid, Garcia, and the boys. They had one of the SUVs, riding light with nothing but a few barebones medical supplies and plenty of ammunition. While they were out, they might as well pick up some gas, but they prioritized people. 

JJ’s people lived in a little white house at the end of a cul de sac. It was about as dangerous a location as you could find in a small town with a population under twenty thousand. The car was quiet, for an SUV, but it was still loud enough to attract the attention of a few shamblers, not to mention that plenty of the things just happened to be in the road to begin with. Morgan and JJ had to pick them off with rifles as Hotch drove, slow and steady up the street. They couldn’t risk hitting one and doing damage to their vehicle. 

From the passenger seat, JJ made a sharp, pained noise. 

“You all right?” Morgan took his eyes off his sector to check hers. Nothing had been close enough bite her. It didn’t even look as though anything had gotten close enough to splash her, which was an infection risk, albeit a minor one when they were all in tactical gear. 

“Fine,” JJ choked. “I just killed my aunt.” 

“No,” Hotch said immediately, never taking his eyes off the road. “You killed the infection that killed your aunt.” 

JJ nodded once, took a deep breath, and went back to work. She was probably the strongest person Morgan knew. Between the two of them, they went through almost seven magazines. Given the amount of practice they’d both had with M4s under the general’s command, and knowing that JJ could out shoot him on most days, Derek figured they’d cleared somewhere between a hundred-seventy-five and two hundred zombies off the mean streets of East Allegheny. Of course, the noise of the rifles attracted any within earshot, and they didn’t have enough ammo to take out twenty thousand of the things. 

Once Hotch pulled up in front of the Jareau household, the three of them slid seamlessly into position. They hadn’t discussed a plan of attack, but they didn’t need words to enact one. Climbing up onto the hood of the SUV, Hotch hefted his own unused M4, and made sure nothing came within ten yards of the vehicle as JJ and Morgan bounced up the porch. 

JJ opened the door, but Morgan was the one to go through it first, which meant he was the one to catch the zombie stumbling down the white carpeted staircase past the family photographs. He put two bullets in its head and it tumbled forward, rolling down the steps to land at his feet. A second zombie came hissing out of a family room to his left. He put it down. A third was in the kitchen to his right, also easily dropped. No real surprises, except for JJ vomiting over the side of the porch. 

Putting a hand on her back that she would barely feel through the kevlar, Derek tried to think of something comforting to say. “I’m so sorry about your parents.”

“I knew,” she mumbled, staring down at the puddle of her own puke. “They had no training, no safe way out, nothing to protect them. I knew they wouldn’t make it. I just wasn’t expecting they’d still be in the house. I thought it would be empty and I could wonder for a little longer, you know?”

“We can cremate them,” Derek suggested. “Give them a proper service.” His words were punctuated by the regular firing of Hotch’s rifle. They didn’t have a lot of time, but they could manage something. 

“No,” JJ said. “It’s a waste of resources.”

“Okay, momma, that’s real smart. Your parents wouldn’t want you to risk your life on a lost cause. Do you want anything from the house before we go?” 

JJ hesitated. “There’s a family picture on the mantle from when we were children. My sister is smiling in it. And another with my folks, Will, and Henry that I don’t have a copy of. Most of my photographs were digital. Do you think you could?” 

“Of course.” Derek pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head. “You wait right there.” 

Ducking back into the house, he stepped over the dead bodies and made his way to the living room. The two photographs were easy to locate among the dozen or so pictures of Henry. Years after her suicide, the family still gave pictures of JJ’s sister pride of place. They’d been good people. Had to have been, to raise a woman like JJ. Derek snatched up a wedding album and a second scrapbook as well. JJ would never come back to this house; she deserved to hold on to a few of the good memories. He took the time to stop in the kitchen, just to check, since they’d already used up quite a bit of ammunition getting to the house and clearing it. 

Jackpot. The Jareau family had been the type to buy canned goods in bulk. Derek cleaned them out, not pausing to read the labels, just shoving everything into as many bags as he could carry. There was even an unopened tin of coffee. It was slow, awkward going, but he sure didn’t want to take the time to make two trips. He hated having his rifle slung across his back. If worse came to worst, he’d have to drop everything and use his sidearm, but that would take time. He didn’t need to, just felt his adrenaline spike as he stepped back out over the dead bodies. Even though he’d put them down himself, these days his hypervigilance recognized every corpse as a threat, moving or not. 

After loading up the trunk, Morgan slipped into the driver’s seat. Hotch jumped down from the hood to take point, firing into the growing swarm that shuffled in from around and behind the other houses on the street. There were over a hundred of the things and the crowd was only going to get thicker the more time passed. He was lucky they hadn’t completely choked off his only point of egress. JJ closed the passenger door, and resumed firing out of her window. Hotch got into the back seat. The zombies on Morgan’s side of the car got a lot closer while Hotch took his time getting situated, but he resumed fire quickly enough. 

“We set?” 

Both of his team members grunted in the affirmative and Morgan put the pedal to the relatively safe speed of ten miles an hour. JJ was amazing, putting down everything in front of them with one bullet apiece. Headshot after headshot, like she couldn’t miss. Unfortunately, Morgan’s best wasn’t enough. He tried not to run over anyone - anything - but he couldn’t avoid all of the bodies. Eventually they did make it through the crush. He was able to speed up; Hotch and JJ were able to slow down, firing less frequently as their attackers thinned out. 

Once he kicked it up to thirty, the threat dropped away. Any zombies attracted by the noise of the vehicle were far behind them by the time they shambled out onto the road. JJ and Hotch hauled their guns in and rolled up their windows. They were as safe as it got, but they couldn’t afford to just head back to the farmhouse. Not unless JJ really needed to. 

“Are you going to be okay if we stop for gas?” 

Wiping her eyes with a kleenex, JJ took a deep breath, blew her nose, and then took another. “Of course,” she said, as though she hadn’t been crying for ten minutes straight. 

“We’re going to need a wider perimeter,” he said, feeling like an asshole. “We can’t have hot shell casings falling around a gas station. It’s too dangerous.” 

“You think I don’t know that?” The girl had a glare that could burn down a house. Derek felt a fierce, protective love swell in his chest for her. “I can handle it.”

And she could, too. She and Hotch set up at either corner of the gas station’s slab. Without electricity to power the built in pumps, syphoning gasoline from the underground reservoir was a chore and a half. It took Derek half an hour just to fill their tank. By that time, his teammates had made enough noise downing the zombies that wandered close enough to spot them that they were starting to swarm. 

Time was of the essence, but they were already taking the chance. It made more sense to get as many supplies as possible when the kids and civilians were safe and out of harm’s way. He filled over a dozen gas cans, stacking them carefully in the trunk. It was enough. Enough to top up the team’s second vehicle and get them into the Catskills. If they had to live day to day, at least they could be well provisioned. Despite the time crunch, and the rapidly accelerating rate of fire coming from Hotch and JJ, Derek ducked into the store. The candy racks inside the station had been pretty well looted, but he found a few boxes in the back and loaded them up as well. It wasn’t healthy, but there was no harm in having the stuff around. A little sugar could go a long way toward improving morale. 

The kids were thrilled about them when they got back to the farmhouse, at any rate. Apparently Jack had a thing for Kit Kats. The kid started begging the second he saw the box. Henry joined in, bouncing up and down, asking his mom if they could both have one, or maybe share one, please, please, please. JJ burst into tears, gathering her son in her arms, and promising him that he could have anything he wanted. Hotch was the one to lay down the law, offering Jack one candy bar after dinner in exchange for good behavior. 

“Well to preemptively thank you for the candy, Team Wait at Home and Worry has a little surprise for you, too.’ Garcia gestured to a big pot of boiling water on the wood burning stove. The thing was obviously in the kitchen for the aesthetic and s’mores, but it was damn useful. 

“Soup?” Morgan guessed.

“Oh sweetheart, you must be so tired. No.”

“A bath,” JJ said, looking surprised and hopeful. 

“Ding, ding, ding! JJ’s earned her profiler merit badge for the day. Yes indeed, yours truly and the good Doctor Reid have been at the pump all day boiling water so that our weary warriors would have a chance to clean up when they got home. Just because we’ve left the land of water heaters behind us, doesn’t mean we’ve left civilization.” 

Hotch smiled warmly. “That was very kind of you.”

“Full disclosure, we tested the concept once through with the non warriors. With the exception of Henry and Jack, we all did soap-downs with a bucket in the shower before using the tub so we wouldn’t have to change the water.”

“Smart,” Hotch agreed.

“But I cleaned out the tub after the boys so whoever wants to go first will have a piping hot, perfectly clear bath to start off in.”

“JJ” Derek and Hotch said in tandem. 

Smiling wearily, JJ nodded her thanks to them. “Looks like I’m up first, then. I’ll try to save you boys some hot water.” 

“Doctor Reid reliably informed me that adding twenty quarts of boiling water to a room temperature tub is going to make it nicely toasty for the next person, and experimental evidence was with him.” 

“Take your time baby,” Derek agreed, trying for charming even though he was, as Garcia said, tired. “Enjoy it. I’m betting it’s been a year since your last hot bath. I know it has been since mine.” 

It worked. Her smile became a little more genuine as she headed up the stairs, Garcia following behind her with the enormous, steaming stock pot. And she did take her time, half an hour at least, which gave Hotch a chance to catch up the other adults on what they found without forcing JJ to relive being attacked by the corpses of her parents. Hotch took the second shift, after Derek insisted, but he didn’t take his time. The man probably spent eight minutes in the bathroom all told, which couldn’t have given him more than a five minute soak. 

If Derek were interested in self denial, he might have followed the example, but he wasn’t. Being the last person in the house to use the tub meant he was fine just floating for a while, letting the hot water ease his aching muscles, letting some of the tension in his body finally drain away. He didn’t think about JJ’s family, or his own, or Reid sitting so close to Park. He definitely didn't think about Reid with a gun to his own head. For a little while, he just let himself be. Feeling truly clean for the first time in months, he put on his best button down, the one without any stains or missing buttons, and headed down to dinner. 

Sitting down together for a meal as a team was good for all of them, but especially JJ. Something about sitting at a nice table, eating from plates instead of trays, and using cloth napkins seemed to strengthen her. Derek had always known she was detail oriented, but in the stark new reality it seemed less natural and thus somehow more pure. When dessert came around, Reid took the opportunity to regale Park with the history of the candy bar. 

“Rodolphe Lindt, a Swiss confectioner, was the one who had the idea of adding cocoa butter to milk chocolate, allowing it to keep its shape at room temperature only melting at the higher temperature of the human mouth.” 

“Is that relative?” Derek asked, injecting himself into their conversation seamlessly. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, since your mouth is the hottest thing on the planet, does candy still liquefy in it, or does it just straight up combust?” 

Spencer opened his mouth, then closed it again, blushing a deep red. Used to getting a little something back when he flirted, Derek didn’t know what to say either. It had only been two days. If the kid really was moving on, he’d like to at least have a conversation about it. 

The loud clatter of a glass hitting a plate across the table drew his attention. JJ looked shocked. Hotch looked pretty surprised, too. The only people who weren’t paying attention to Derek’s apparently failed attempt at flirting with the man he thought he was in a relationship with were the boys and Freeman, who were all still enjoying their candy like they might never get to taste it again. 

“You two?” Garcia asked, her voice pitched high and excited. Behind her glasses, Derek could almost see the cartoon hearts in her eyes. Suddenly it occurred to Derek that he’d just outed them to the team. Only Will had known that he was going after Spencer, because he was a private person, but he’d needed Will’s help. It seemed that he hadn’t mentioned it to his wife, because Will was the type of guy to respect a man’s privacy. Apparently, Spencer hadn’t mentioned it to anyone either, though he was the first to recover.

“Morgan and I have been in a romantic relationship for about a month. We would have mentioned it sooner, but life on base was stressful enough without adding unnecessary variables.” 

“Hey, you don’t have to explain the value of keeping things quiet until you know where they’re going to me,” JJ said quickly. She obviously wished that Spencer had confided in her, but it was equally clear that she meant it. After all, she’d been with Will for almost a year before saying a word to the team about anything.

“Thank you for telling us now,” Hotch said. “You can take the master bedroom tonight, which should make things easier on all of us. Jack tells me that Henry kicks in his sleep, he already requested a sleeping bag instead of repeating last night’s arrangement.” 

Spencer grinned, a bright, joyful smile that looked incongruous on the face of a man who’d tried to kill himself fifty-two hours earlier. Sometime soon, Derek was going to have to face up to the fact that Reid hadn’t been flirting with Park, that Derek had been avoiding him a little. Fortunately, there was nothing forcing him to face it right away.


	3. A Shack

“Being his real brother I could feel that I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.” -Michael Morpurgo

Roads in the Catskills were narrow and winding, made worse by a year without maintenance. Even approaching from the North, there were plenty of hostiles in the woods. Stopping for more than a few minutes required setting a watch, and they needed to stop regularly to clear trees from the road, move abandoned cars, and once, memorably, to pick ripe apples in someone’s abandoned, overgrown orchard. That had been a risk, but the way the boys skipped and laughed while climbing the trees had almost been worth it. Of course they barely had a bushel before the dead started overrunning their location, and the team needed to book it back to the cars. 

Eight and a half million people had lived in New York City during the outbreak. If only a quarter of them were infected, a conservative estimate according to Reid, that was still two million zombies spreading out across the state, looking for fresh meat to carry their disease. As far as Derek was concerned, they should have drawn a three hundred mile no fly zone around the big cities. Unfortunately, he could hardly say that when he wanted to go into Chicago. The southside of Chicago was going to be far more dangerous than mountainous woods a hundred and fifty miles north of New York. Anyway, it would be worth it if they found Hotch’s brother alive. It would be worth it if they found even one person successfully surviving outside of a military base.

From Virginia, to Pennsylvania, to New York, they hadn’t seen a single sign of human life.

Of course, survivors might be masking their presence. As anyone who’d spent even five minutes in the field knew, noise and light attracted the infected. That wasn’t much of an issue on the road. The infected moved slower than healthy, living people, especially those who had been dead for more than a month or two. Even driving at extremely conservative speeds was zipping past a zombie. They didn’t have long term memory, so they couldn’t follow for more than a minute or two once a car was gone from their vision before being distracted by other sounds. However, it was a problem when the team had to stop to clear the road. It was a problem when someone had to fire a gun. It was a problem when they pulled up to an abandoned summer home to bed down for the night and the woods surrounding the house came to life with the undead. It would certainly have been a serious issue for anyone trying to live in such a place.

Dangerous and deadly, Derek couldn’t deny that the forests of the Catskill Mountains were absolutely beautiful. The red and gold leaves arching high on either side of the road were a blaze of glory in the light of dawn. He liked nature; he just didn’t want to die in it. 

“Exact numbers are hard to track because private cars are the most prevalent method of travel, but it’s easy to see why thousands of New Yorkers come up here to view the fall foliage every year.” Reid was a terrible choice to ride shotgun. Instead of watching his sector for movement or surprises, the good doctor was gazing at the trees with a small smile. 

“Came,” Freeman corrected from the back seat where she was comfortably holding a rifle and scanning her sector with the expected military precision. 

“Right.” Reid looked down at the gun in his lap. “Came up here to look at the leaves. Still, the region is 5,892 square miles and sparsely populated for the East Coast. There could still be New Yorkers here. It would be possible for an ordinary citizen like Sean to set up defenses, if he managed to get out of the city before the infection reached critical levels.”

“Possible,” Park agreed, “but isolated.” 

She didn’t need to go into the suicide stats. Everyone in the car knew the hopeless, desperate feeling that seemed to come to every survivor eventually. The feeling that the world had already ended and they were clinging to nothing but the memory of a life that could never again be lived. Reid maybe knew it best of all, but Derek wasn’t going to think about Spencer pressing a gun to his own head. Not while he was driving. 

“So what’s so special about these leaves?” Derek asked, doing his best impression of playful. “Just proximity to the big city, or are these trees better than the ones we were seeing in Pennsylvania?” 

Naturally Reid was more than happy to tell them all about the woods. Apparently the trees of the Catskills were overwhelmingly deciduous, with maples winning most populous at forty-three-point-five percent of the tree population. Listening to the kid go on, Derek felt himself calming down. A minute or two into the discussion of chlorophyll breakdown and anthocyanins in beech trees, he reached over to take Reid’s hand in his, lacing their fingers together. Driving with one hand was a risk, but what wasn’t these days? Following Hotch’s lead in the car ahead, it wasn’t long before they found the cabin they were looking for.

The cabin was just a cabin. Derek wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but most of the places they drove past along the way were vacation homes for reasonably wealthy New York professionals. Those places had big picture windows and solid bones that even a year of neglect couldn’t turn too shabby. In contrast, the cabin was a squat wooden structure with a slat roof that had obviously needed repairs for three or four years at least. The door was too narrow to meet ADA standards, and Derek could see a dozen other little projects that needed to be done just to make the place habitable enough to rent out with his first glance. However, he also saw reason for Hotch to hope. 

A wall, the kind constructed out of felled trees, homemade cement, and hope, surrounded the property. It was the sort of wall that would only have been put up after the outbreak by an amateur with no other options. It looked like something Sean Hotchner might build.

When they dragged the heavy sheet metal gate open, a masculine silhouette threw open the front door, cocking a shotgun like the very image of a prospector defending his claim. That looked like something Sean Hotchner might do. Derek leveled his weapon automatically at the threat, but he smiled as he did so. 

“This house is occupied,” Sean said in a loud, clear voice. “We don’t want any trouble, but we will defend ourselves.”

“What about family?” Hotch asked, stepping forward calmly with his hands in the air. “Is that something you want?”

Wincing as Sean dropped the loaded shotgun, Derek holstered his own weapon. Obviously that was something the guy wanted, judging by the way he raced down the drive shouting “Aaron! Aaron!” 

Up close, Sean Hotchner looked terrible. His eyes were red, bloodshot like he hadn’t slept in weeks. These days a lot of men had beards, but his was longer than most, messy and ragged. Beyond that, there was the smell. Derek didn’t envy Hotch the familial embrace; Sean smelled like a sewer. Hotch, however, didn’t seem to mind. He was clinging to his brother’s bulky flannel coat like it was the Shroud of Turin. 

“Thank God,” Sean mumbled against his brother’s ear. “Thank God you’re here. The goat died. The goat died and I didn’t know what to do, Aaron. Aaron, please, you have to help me. The goat died.” 

“Okay Sean.” Hotch stroked his brother’s matted, filthy hair. “Okay. I’m here. I’ll help with whatever you need. First, is there anyone else in the house?”

Neutral phrasing was good. Sean didn’t break at the question, but it was instantly obvious that he would have if Hotch had asked about his girlfriend in specific terms. He shook his head, looking lost.

“It’s just the two of us.” Pulling away from his brother, Sean turned around and started walking back up to the little cabin. He didn’t seem to notice the rest of the group at all. It wasn’t a good reaction. 

Once again Derek found that he had expectations of what they would see inside the cabin. He’d met a lot of killers and trauma victims in his time, and Sean’s demeanor didn’t make him stand out too much from that crowd. Steeling himself, he was prepared for a dead body, a bound zombie, or even the carcass of the goat that seemed to be bothering Sean. Once again, Derek’s expectations were reversed.

The inside of the cabin was meticulously clean, every floorboard polished to a shine. A cozy fire crackled in the grate and there was a big plastic playpen set up nearby. A curious baby with wispy blonde hair and a soft pink dress was holding the bar to stand up and examine the people coming through her door. Responding to her gentle chirp, Sean went compulsively to the sink, washed his hands with water from a tea kettle, before going to pick her up. He’d left his gun in the garden. Broken, definitely, but Derek didn’t think he was dangerous.

“And who is this?” Hotch asked, smiling the way he always did for babies. 

Sean looked a little startled to see his brother there inside the cabin. He hadn’t been aware of being followed. Derek could hear Freeman and Reid pulling the cars into the drive and dragging the heavy metal gate closed. He didn’t think Sean noticed that either. Still, he recovered enough to talk to his brother. 

“Aaron, meet Erin. Erin Maria Ruiz, since her mother and I never did get married. I don’t even know if we would have. Maria would have had to be crazy to get hitched to a sous chef at a three star restaurant, but I was going to propose.” 

Fumbling in his pocket, Sean took out a typical looking black box. The velvet had been worn away by obsessive handling. As if to demonstrate, Sean turned it over a few times in his hand before flipping the top back to show his brother the ring. The diamond was pretty big, for a guy just getting back on his feet after dodging manslaughter charges. Derek had never met the professor, but from the way Sean stared at the ring, it was clear he thought there was a chance she might have accepted it. 

“Didn’t want to do it while everything was falling apart, though. Didn’t want her to agree just because we might die.” 

“Your daughter is beautiful,” Hotch said firmly. 

Sean looked back at the little girl as if surprised that he was still holding her. “She’s everything. It’s weird up here. I got to thinking we might be the only two people left alive in the whole world. I’m glad you came. I’m really, really glad you came, actually. I need your help. We ran out of baby formula a month ago, which was okay. I’d already been stretching it with the goat’s milk, and she loves butternut squash. Daddy’s little girl loves solid foods. Made some applesauce too, didn’t I? And she eats my sweet potatoes by the handful. So that’s all right, but she stills needs milk. And we lost the goat. It just died. I don’t know what was wrong with it. I buried it. We couldn’t eat it if it just keeled over like that. Might have eaten a poisonous plant or something. Who knows what that would do? But that was four days ago. All she’s been drinking since then is water. It’s been four days with nothing but water. I tried searching some of the nearby houses, but of course they didn’t have shelf stable baby formula. And the woods are full of zombies. I can’t leave her for long. You can. Aaron. Do you think you could get us some? I would. I mean, I know that I already owe you more than I can ever repay, but this one. Just one more. Aaron, she needs milk. All of the books say she needs milk. I think she’s already lost weight. Please, Aaron. Please you have to help.”

“Of course we’ll help, Sean.” Hotch smiled calmly, looking at his niece. “That’s why we came. To help. Can I hold her?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, sure.” Warily, Sean passed the baby to his brother. 

Lifting the child to his face, Hotch wiggled his eyebrows and got a gurgling smile in response. “You know I have to ask. Erin?” 

Sean’s head snapped away, looking down at the well scrubbed floors. Poor guy was practically a textbook case of survivor’s guilt. “When she was born it was. It was a bad day. Not her being born, but everything else. Maria didn’t make it, and I didn’t know what to do. I just kept thinking that you would know what to do. I wanted her to be the kind of person who knows what to do. Anyway, don’t be too flattered. I’ve mostly been calling her Ace. Haven’t I, Ace?” 

“Hi, Ace.” Spencer slid in beside Derek, smiling gently and craning his long, elegant neck to get a better view of the baby. “She seems happy enough, Sean. I wouldn’t worry about malnutrition just yet. Most powdered commercial baby formula brands are shelf stable for more than a year. We should be able to find something for her at a drugstore or grocery store if there’s one located close by?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, there’s a Price Chopper about five miles down the road.” Sean ran a hand through his filthy hair. “It’s not safe, though. There are other buildings. Other people. Not people anymore, though. It’s not safe to go down there. Maria and I tried to go down there. She wanted to. She wanted to go down there and it wasn’t safe. There were too many of them.” 

“We’ll get what you need, Sean.” Putting a comforting hand on the guy’s shoulder, Derek gave him his most confident smile. Between JJ, Hotch, and himself, they could clear one grocery store. 

“Freeman, you in for a drugstore run?” JJ nudged the black woman gently. “I think Hotch might want to sit this one out.” 

Hotch actually looked torn by the prospect, but Freeman smiled at him. “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.” 

“We really do.” Derek stroked one finger across the baby’s soft cheek, then turned to follow JJ. 

Behind him, he heard Garcia bullying Sean. “While they’re out, we have to get you cleaned up. Seriously, you smell like a fifteen year old. Worse, even. I know running water is a problem, but we brought soap. Never fear, your heroes are here.” 

Between facing Penelope Garcia in full fix-it mode and a grocery store full of zombies, Derek would choose the grocery store every time. Unfortunately, Sean hadn’t been exaggerating. A few hundred zombies slouched toward the grocery store as soon as they heard a car pull up. Still, Sean obviously hadn’t had assault rifles and good backup when he went in. The zombies were all the older, slower sort, most of them having already lost body parts to decay. It was easy to cover while JJ took a cart through the mostly ransacked grocery store. Luck was in their favor there. While all of the canned goods, toilet paper, and bulk rice was gone, there was plenty of baby formula. Apparently that hadn’t been a priority item for the previous raiders. 

JJ checked the expiration dates on the bottoms of big cans of formula as she loaded them into a shopping cart because she was smart and thorough. She also insisted on going down the diaper aisle. The tampons, condoms, and cleaning products were all gone, but there were still a few big boxes of diapers. Derek wasn’t going to argue. It might have been nice if there were things in the store that the team could use, but they were here to help Sean. A few clips of ammo were worth the startled, grateful look on his clean, well shaven face when they returned to the cabin with their haul. 

Grocery runs had gone on the list of things that would never be the same again a long time ago. 

Still, blood and gore were a small price to pay for hope. Hope was what they had now. Excusing himself, Derek slipped away from the laughing, happy hugs, and JJ’s cooing over the baby. Staying to watch Sean heat a bottle over the stove was pointless. Crushing together with the exhilaration of survival was always a good thing. Sometimes, though, a man needed space. 

Sean’s garden was a big one, but clearly it had already given most of what it had. The stalks of sweet corn along the wall were yellow, dead and drying. A big patch of strawberries still had a few green leaves to show among the brown, but all the fruit was gone. Furrowed rows of bare, black earth stood waiting for snow, or the spring that would follow it, clearly whatever had been growing there had been cleared away completely. Yet not everything was dead or dormant. There was still one patch of living, fruit bearing plants left. In the middle of all the empty space, there were squash. Gourds of all kinds sprawled around their little patch, with bright halloween pumpkins, dusty, hourglass shaped butternuts, greenish orange acorns, and others that Derek barely recognized and couldn’t name. 

Bending down, he put his hand against one of the ripe, living plants. Perhaps all the trees were dying in the autumn chill, but there was still color. There was still life. There was still a chance. 

“Sean’s putting together quite a meal in there,” Spencer said quietly. “Polenta, stuffed acorn squash, some kind of mushroom risotto. In part I’m sure it’s a response to missing his brother and being pleased to see Jack and Hotch alive, but I think it’s also out of gratitude to you and JJ for the grocery run.” 

“I’m sure it’s good stuff.” Derek watched a beetle crawl across the smooth surface of a pumpkin. “The boy knows how to cook.” 

“Your mother and sisters know things, too.” 

“Not this.” The brown insect paused for a moment, fluttering its little wings before going completely still. “None of them garden. It’s easy to forget how dangerous just going down the road to the grocery store is when we’re armed to the teeth, but for anyone without our level of training, that would have been a death sentence. And for what? There was nothing left on those shelves that could have fed an adult.” 

“I don’t know them that well, obviously. I’ve only met them a few times. So you’ll have to tell me, Derek. Do you think they’re survivors?”

The beetle took off, flying up away from the pumpkin patch and toward the setting sun. “I hope so.” Spencer’s eyes went wide with whatever it was that he could read in Derek’s face. Rather than let that continue, Derek pulled him close, hugging him tightly, and burying his nose against the crook of Reid’s neck. Hope might hurt, but he couldn’t let go of it. He didn’t know how.


	4. The Stop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been reading this story for a while, please note the change in rating. Here there be slightly gratuitous sex. Derek is a man of action, and it takes action to repair a relationship for him.

_“We make a lot of detours, but we’re always heading for the same destination.” -Paulo Coelho_

Packing up Sean and the baby took a few days. Most of that had to do with food and the car, so Derek didn’t resent it. Under other circumstances he might have. The cabin was small, so everyone but JJ, Garcia, and Freeman had to sleep in bags on the floor.

Sean had worked hard on his garden -- canning vegetables, stocking herbs, growing everything from seed. It made sense that he would want to bring what they could on the road and eat what they couldn’t before they left. Derek had no objections to a high end chef whipping them up three square a day, even if the poor guy spent the entire time muttering to himself about needing eggs and how he should have let Maria get chickens. 

Sean’s terrible old Jeep, on the other hand, was nothing but an irritation. No one could deny that they needed a third car. Between formula, diapers, and homemade pickles, Sean and Erin alone had a car load of baggage. It only made sense for them to bring a third car along. Unfortunately, Sean’s car, which might have been sufficient to drive back and forth between the city and the mountains a year ago, had been standing in the driveway unused for months. It needed a little love, and Derek didn’t have a garage set up to make giving it an overhaul anything like convenient. 

Still, there was oil and Derek changed it. There was a catalytic converter and Derek cleaned it. There was a tire in need of patching and Derek repaired it. It was nice to have something productive to do, soothing his nerves while he waited impatiently. 

While he wasn’t necessarily in a hurry for the group to leave the relatively safe confines of Sean’s wall, Derek needed to get back on the road. If hope was a thing with feathers, it tickled Derek like an old, overstuffed pillow. He couldn’t rest. He couldn’t concentrate. He could not wait a single moment longer than necessary to get back on the road to Chicago. It was time to go home. 

Unfortunately, the road didn’t agree. Between New York and Chicago was the little farm in Ohio with Park’s grandparents. It only made sense to check on them first. Sean was too dissociated to drive, but JJ and Freeman both had tactical driving experience. In that way, the third car made for a nice change to the driving dynamic. Whenever they stopped for bathrooms or gas, the sort of things that used to take five minutes before the apocalypse but now involved at least half an hour of careful scouting, passengers would shuffle around. Derek kept dibs on Reid, but shifting meant that he got to steal Garcia from Hotch, have JJ and the boys in the back seat, even Sean and the baby for a bit. It was nice to share drive time with the rest of the team, even if they weren’t yet headed for his destination of choice. The detour took three days, partly due to another flat tire on Sean’s broken down jeep, but they managed without Triple A. What they found at the farm was hardly worth the time. 

That was horrible. If over a decade in law enforcement hadn’t made him completely jaded, the end of the world clearly had. What they found at the little chicken farm in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio destroyed Park completely. She sobbed and clung to Reid and then returned to the car to sit in absolute silence. Finding Sean alive had apparently given her too much hope. Derek knew what that felt like. 

It was a cut and dry suicide, just like thousands of others that happened after the outbreak. The little old Korean couple were lying in their bed together with a few open bottles of sleeping pills. They had obviously gone peacefully, but judging by the state of decay and the smell, they had done so only a few months after the initial outbreak. Park vomited when she saw them. Derek wished that she had been a little less insistent about about accompanying them into the farmhouse. 

The real tragedy was that they might have survived. The farm was about as far from major population centers as it was possible to be, thirty miles from the nearest small town which had housed less than three thousand people the last time anyone counted. There were no signs of zombies around the farm. There was no sign that their lives had been in any immediate danger. These people had been accustomed to living on their own away from other people with little to no support. They had simply lost hope. In a way, that was Derek’s fault as much as, if not more than, the loss of life in the outbreak. It was the government’s job to contain and control threats to prevent public panic. Panicking had killed Park’s grandparents. If the FBI had been better at media relations, if the BAU had done a better job of managing public reaction, if Derek had worked harder to contain the outbreak, maybe Park’s family would have made different choices. 

Maybe Derek didn’t deserve to hope. Maybe Derek shouldn’t hope. Maybe maybes would drive him mad. 

So he buried the jealousy that sparked in his chest when he saw Park clinging to Reid, and he dug a grave for her grandparents. Working away from the others, out past the sprawling, overgrown vegetable patch that Sean was distractedly searching for anything not yet gone to seed in November. Hotch found a second shovel and joined him. 

“Next up is your mother and sisters,” he grunted when they were about two feet into the work. 

“Yeah.” Derek shucked his leather jacket, feeling the warm autumn sun on his shoulders. 

“It’s not like you to worry and overthink this much.”

“I’m not worrying,” Derek defended reflexively. After tossing a shovelful of dirt onto his pile, he stabbed the steel tip of the shovel into the dirt and gripped the handle. “And what do you mean, profiling me? What about this situation is so typical that you think you can predict my behavior? The whole world is a stressor now, Hotch. People change.” 

“I know.” Hotch sighed, leaning against his own shovel. “And I know what you’re agonizing about.”

“I’m not agonizing, Hotch.”

“We can’t drive into Chicago.” 

Shifting his grip, Derek resumed his work. The crisp scent of dead leaves mixed with the warm, rich turn of the earth every time he lifted shovel blade. “Of course not. It’s too risky. I’ll go alone.” 

“Derek.” Hotch had his compassionate face on, the one he used to talk to a victim’s family. Part of Derek, not a small part, wanted to punch him right in his soft, serious eye. “That isn’t what I’m suggesting.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the option you have.” 

“You aren’t entering a hot zone alone.”

“You don’t get to give me orders anymore, man!”

Hotch took a deep breath. Only then did Derek notice how close they were. It hadn’t been his intention to get into Hotch’s face like that. It hadn’t been his intention to shout. Mirroring Hotch, he took a deep breath of his own and backed off. 

“Obviously, I’m phrasing this badly,” Hotch said. “I think we should take bicycles.”

“Bicycles?”

“They’re quiet enough not to attract a swarm, more maneuverable on unknown terrain than one of the SUVs, and fast enough on asphalt to leave any infected we attract well behind.” 

“Let me get this straight.” Derek leaned against his shovel, feeling a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Chicago is going to be full of the infected. If we went in a tank, we might have half a chance of making it out alive, as long as we were armed to the teeth with missiles and grenades. So instead of taking one of our reasonably well armored SUVs, you’re suggesting that we try the bike path.” 

Laughing in surprise, Hotch agreed. “I guess I am.” 

“Well shit man, that sounds like fun. Of course I’m in.” 

“So am I.” 

Derek’s stomach dropped into his shoes. Turning slowly, he saw Spencer standing at the top of the grave, looking down at them seriously. 

“No,” Derek said, “You’re not.”

“I can ride a bicycle, and I'm as highly rated with my sidearm as anyone. I may not have JJ’s facility with heavier weapons, but she and Hotch are the only people on this team with parenting experience. Risking both of them in Chicago is illogical. Going in a team of three is the best option, especially if there's a chance of extracting civilians.”

“Freeman does have heavy weapons training. Unlike you.” Derek looked to Hotch for backup, but the team leader was sizing Reid up, taking the offer seriously. 

“You can't ask Freeman to go into an infected metropolitan area.” For someone talking crazy, Reid sounded more reasonable than Derek liked. “Any member of this team would risk everything for you, for your family, but she's never met them. She barely knows us. She's pregnant and scared and I don't think it's wise to push her that hard this soon.”

“I agree.” Damn him, Hotch was actually buying it. 

Derek was not. “No way. You are not going into the field with us. You’re out of practice. You haven’t been out in months.”

“We’re all in the field now.”

“This isn’t up for discussion! My family, my call.”

Reid looked at Hotch. “You’ve been working for a while. Can I dig for a bit?”

“It has nothing to do with physical fitness!”

The look Hotch gave Derek made him feel about three feet tall. Right. Reid wasn’t trying to prove something by joining Derek at the bottom of a shallow grave, he was asking to talk to him privately. Clapping the good doctor on the shoulder, Hotch passed him the shovel and stepped up out of the grave. “I’ll go check on Jack.” 

“Thanks Hotch.” Reid didn’t say anything else as Hotch sauntered away. He didn’t start digging either, just stared at Derek. 

“I know you’re capable,” Derek said, trying to forestall the coming argument. 

“Yes,” Spencer agreed mildly, tilting his head to one side. “You do.” 

“Right.” A little off balance, Derek kept going. “This has nothing to with whether or not I think you can shoot.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that.” Spencer was smiling in the bright afternoon sunshine. That was all the warning Derek had before he stepped forward, placed a guiding hand on Derek’s left cheek, and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips.

Much better than arguing. Derek opened his mouth to return the kiss, wrapping his arms around Spencer’s slight frame, curling fingers into his long, messy hair. 

“Come on,” Spencer said, stepping up and away, taking Derek by the hand and pulling him up out of the grave. 

Without hesitation, Derek followed him. Following Spencer didn’t frighten him, it was only the reverse that made him nervous. 

Organic and sustainable or not, the hen houses just past the split rail fence were huge. Thankfully, they didn’t go inside. Derek had checked them for infected when the team first got to the farm. The smell had not been what he would call romantic. 

Behind the big chicken coop, though, was just private enough to enjoy the fresh air of a warm November afternoon. Reid was usually so easy going. Pushing Derek up against the solid wooden wall and taking what he wanted was new. If it was an argument in favor of risking his life in Chicago it wouldn’t work, but Derek wasn’t going to deny the man a kiss if he wanted one. They’d shared a bed a few times, but they hadn’t really been together since before leaving the base down south. Derek let his hands drift south, palming Reid’s ass, just a little, loving the way it made him groan. 

Grinning brilliantly in the autumn sunshine, Spencer dropped to his knees and started working on Derek’s belt. That was a little too far. They were outside. Public indecency didn’t stop being an issue when you were personally acquainted with every single member of the public within a hundred miles. If anything, being caught out had the potential to be even more awkward. Turning Spencer down wasn’t an option, though. Not once he had Derek’s pants open. It had been so long. 

Teasing, Spencer closed one hand around the base of Derek’s cock, brushing his lips gently over the tip. Warm breath slid over Derek’s shaft, but Spencer’s mouth slid away, smiling. Those big, brown eyes were studying Derek’s face like there was something interesting about it. 

“Come on, pretty boy,” Derek murmured, resting a hand gently against Spencer’s cheek. “If we’re going to do this we can’t be all day about it.” 

Leaning against Derek’s palm, Spencer hummed an affirmative, but he didn’t return to the greedy, groping attitude that had initially shoved Derek up against the wall. Derek curled his fingers lightly against the back of Spencer’s head, guiding him forward. Those perfectly full lips fell open with a soft, “oh.” Spencer took Derek into his mouth, sliding down until his lips met his hand. Then he stopped, sucking happily, working his tongue against the underside of Derek’s shaft with an expert undulation. Being in Spencer’s mouth was good, sweet, but it was just more of the same tease. 

“Still playing me?” Looking down into Spencer’s wide, wanting eyes, Derek didn’t see laughter. On his knees, the boy was begging for something, but Derek didn’t know what it was. With the hand on Spencer’s soft cheek, he pushed him back, just a gentle pressure against his jaw. Again, Spencer went eagerly, slipping off Derek’s cock with a small sigh. He didn't say anything, but he licked his lips, looking up at Derek expectantly, leaving his jaw slack. 

Realization hit Derek like the shockwave of an explosion, knocking him breathless. What Reid wanted - what he needed - was instantly obvious. It was also the hottest thing a lover had ever asked Derek to do. Gently, Derek wrapped his other hand around the back of Spencer’s head and guided him back down. In answer, Spencer moaned gratefully and closed his eyes. 

Responding to minute shifts in the pressure of Derek’s hands, Spencer bobbed up and down the length of Derek’s cock like he needed it, but he was always exactly where Derek wanted him. When Derek whispered “tighter,” trying to stay quiet even though the hint of exhibitionism seemed to be working for Reid, the genius doubled down. Moaning like he was the one about to give it up, Spencer sucked so hard Derek saw stars. The kid liked it, being on his knees, being told what to do. He liked it when Derek gripped him by the hair and fucked his mouth so much that he started whining and palming his own crotch with his free hand. Not opening his pants because, fuck, because he wanted Derek’s permission for that.

“Touch yourself,” Derek said, and it wasn't anything but an order. 

Whimpering, Reid tore open his fly. Still sucking desperately at Derek, still moving exactly the way Derek wanted him, he started working his own dick in a rhythm that perfectly matched the one Derek was fucking into his perfect mouth. He was amazing. He was too much. “You gonna drink me down, pretty boy? Pull out if it's too much. You, fuck. Take it. You're so good. Take it all.”

Like a miracle, Reid obeyed. 

When Derek managed to open his eyes and lift his head from where it had banged back against the wall of the old chicken coop, Reid was already getting to his feet. By the time Derek had his pants up and his belt buckled, Spencer was back to his usual level of disheveled. For that, Derek needed to kiss him again. 

Somehow, one more kiss turned into two, turned into ten. But Derek’s hands were north of the equator and everyone was fully clothed when he heard Henry’s shrieking giggle. 

“Ew! They're kissing!“

Derek’s head snapped up, away from Spencer’s lips. 

“Sorry,” Jack said, rounding the corner as Derek reluctantly released Spencer and took a full step back. “I know we're not supposed to be this far from the house.”

“True,” Hotch said, following the boys sedately. “But they're supposed to be digging.”

“We, ah.” Derek coughed. “We got a little sidetracked.” 

“So I see.” There was laughter in Hotch’s voice, not judgment. That was good. “Did you work things out?”

Reid put his hands in his pockets looking absolutely smug. “Of course. Derek’s feeling much more reasonable now.” 

A shocked laugh burst from Derek’s mouth. “You’re not serious.” 

Tilting his head so that he could blink up at Derek through long lashes, Reid said, “You have to let me come, Derek. I’m only safe when I’m with you.” 

Laughing even harder, Derek grabbed Reid in a headlock and tousled his hair playfully. “Sure. Gotta have you where I can keep an eye on you, you manipulative little fox.” It wasn’t actually possible to be angry at Reid for profiling him when it led to the guy giving him exactly what he wanted. Derek was comfortable enough with himself to admit that he liked a little bit of power and control as much as the next man, and he didn’t mind Spencer giving it to him. He didn’t even mind Spencer knowing that giving it to him would calm him down, that the illusion of control would help him collect his feelings. 

He couldn’t stop smiling, even as they left Hotch to play with the kids and went back to digging graves for a couple that had been together longer than either of them had been alive. “Hey, man. For real. How much of that did you actually get off on?”

Spencer smiled enigmatically. “More than you probably think I did. Less than I do when you fuck me.” 

Once again, Derek could only laugh. Laugh, and tackle his lover into the still green grass, kissing him one more time.


	5. Chapter 5

“Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception.” - Bill Bryson

_“Derek,_

_“I hope you don’t get this letter, but I feel compelled to write it. Does that make any sense at all, big brother? Well why should it? Nothing else does anymore. Zombies are swarming all over Chicago, and we have to leave. We have to try to find somewhere safe, but before we do I have to find a way to tell you that we doesn’t encompass as many people as you might think._

_“Mom died on Saturday._

_“That sounds so simple, doesn’t it. A sister telling her brother that their mother has passed. Passed. That makes it sound peaceful. It wasn’t. She fell to the bite and a cop shot her. If any member of this family was going to be shot by a cop…_

_“Not funny. I know. I’m sorry. This is so hard. Desi and I are going up to Wisconsin. A friend of hers has a vacation home in the middle of nowhere. No one in the neighborhood has power or heat. We have to go now, before the road is buried by snow. A bunch of us are going, trying to get as far away from the infection as possible. Trying to get to a place we can heat well enough to make it through the winter. I’ll leave a map here on the table with this letter and my love. Come join us if you can, but don't worry about us if you can't. Desiree and I can take care of ourselves. I'm only sorry that we couldn't take care of mom._

_“Your Favorite Older Sister, Sarah”_

Staring at the letter in his hand, Derek tried to make sense of the words. In a way, it was exactly what he’d come for. It was the reason he’d biked nearly thirty miles along an abandoned stretch of the I-94 with only Hotch, Reid, and sidearms that wouldn’t slow them down, dodging stray zombies and trying to stay silent. If he was honest with himself, he’d only expected to find bodies in the tiny house behind the chain link fence. The note was certainty. His mother was dead. The note was hope. Desiree and Sarah had survived the initial blackouts and loss of service that had killed so many in the major cities. 

In the end, Sarah’s letter was only more uncertainty. He’d have to follow the map if he wanted to know what had happened to his sisters, and even then there were no guarantees. There was nothing to suggest that they’d actually made it out of Chicago. 

“Have you found anything in the kitchen?” Hotch called from the front room where he was watching the street. “I’m starting to think we should have brought the bikes inside. There’s movement on the street, coming from the surrounding houses. A lot of movement.” 

Wiping a tear from his eye unseen, Derek managed to pocket the letter and the map before Reid came into the kitchen looking for him. 

“Nothing upstairs or in the basement,” he reported, searching Derek’s face carefully.

“Yeah. I’ve got a letter here. They evacuated to Wisconsin. I’ll have to look north.” It wasn’t the time to go into depth about who may or may not have lived to leave town. 

“They must be able to hear us.” Hotch sounded rattled. Hotch never sounded rattled. “There are too many of them. Maybe more than we brought bullets. We can’t shoot our way through. Even if we made it to the bikes.” 

A sudden crash sounded from the front room, then the gentle tinkle of broken glass. The picture windows were too high for normal zombies to stand on, unless they were pressing in so tightly that they were clambering over the fallen bodies of those in front. The windows next to the door would be easier to access, but a zombie couldn’t climb through one of those. Derek didn’t wait around to find out what had happened. Hotch came sprinting into the kitchen. 

“We need to go. Out the back. Now.”

Trusting his team to keep up, Derek raced out the back door. He could see the zombies swarming around the sides of the house in their slow, instinctual way, but they hadn’t yet cut off the point of egress. The things were deadly, but mindless. That made evading them possible for anyone able to think on the fly. 

He led Hotch and Reid down the back alley, over the wrecked remains of a totaled car, and up the street. They were only a few blocks out when he heard Reid panting for breath. Slowing to a jog, he turned to look. The hoard was still with them, following behind at the fastest shamble they could manage. What was worse was the zombies dropping out of the houses and the corner stores they passed, joining the hunt from either side and even occasionally from the front. Hotch was light on his feet, and Derek could dodge them easily, but they had to keep Spencer between them where it was safest. Eventually, Derek had to start using his sidearm to clear the ones that appeared ahead of them. The booming gunshots only served to attract more zombies.

“Can you keep up this pace?” Hotch was smart to ask. They’d only been running for half an hour, barely a clip of ammunition apiece, but Reid was already wheezing. 

“Of course,” he gasped. “This is just what it sounds like when I run. Anyway, air is overrated.” 

“We need a plan,” Hotch said seriously. He wasn't wrong. Maybe he and Derek could run all the way out of the city and back to the cars where the rest of the team waited, with incredible luck as long as neither made a single mistake, but Spencer couldn't. 

“This way.” The ladder for the rickety fire escape had to be at least ten, maybe twelve feet up. Derek could see that the building was a burnt out shell. Absolutely unsafe to enter, and the safest place on the block. The interior of a turn of the century store front would be made of wood, which meant that there would be no interior stairs. Any zombies on the upper floors should have died in the fire. It was a safe place to stop. It would give them a minute to breathe and think, figure out a way out for Reid. 

Kicking off the wall, Derek lept up and grabbed the base of the iron ladder. It came down fast. Too fast. He landed funny. Pain shot through his leg and he cried out sharply, dropping to the asphalt. Instantly, Spencer was there, helping him up. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Standing on one foot, Derek shoved Hotch toward the ladder. “Get up there.” 

After looking him in the eye for a long moment, Hotch gave Derek a nod and started climbing. Derek got his gun up, clearing a few zombies that were getting close. 

“You next,” Spencer said, shooting a few of his own between the eyes. 

“Not in this lifetime.” 

With a frustrated, adorable little growl, Spencer started climbing. Hotch was already on the landing, testing it with his weight, firing down at the approaching horde. 

Finally, the ladder was clear and Derek hopped up, rung by rung, keeping his weight off his right foot. When he made it to the landing, he collapsed, letting Hotch pull the ladder up and away from the zombies. The moment Hotch and Reid stopped firing, the horde closed in below them like a wave, pressing up against the side of the building, trying to climb on top of one another to reach the three humans just a few feet above them. 

“We have to keep climbing, get out of their line of sight if we can,” Hotch said.

“We have to check Derek’s leg,” Reid argued. “Can you get your boot off?”

“If I take my boot off, I’m not getting it back on.” Taking a deep breath, Derek hauled himself up with the rickety railing. Given the temporary safety of the platform, he had no objections to going first up the stairs, even at his slow hop. He could feel Spencer at his back and see Hotch bringing up the rear whenever he rounded a bend. The iron under his feet shook with each hop, and Derek worried about the bolts shaking loose of the damaged brick, but the thing was clearly up to code. The old fire escape managed to support the weight of three grown men all the way to the roof.

The roof was as far as Derek could go. Seeing it was clear, a wide open space with only a steel chimney and a padlocked hatch, Derek dropped to the tar, leaning against the low brick wall that ringed the roof, breathing heavily through the pain. 

Once again, Spencer was right there, kneeling on the roof with a hand on Derek’s arm and another on his lower leg. “Okay. We’re safe up here for the moment. Let me take a look at your leg.” 

The midday sun haloed Reid, turning the messy wisps of his shaggy brown hair to gold. He was still breathing fast, his face a portrait of concern, which only made what Derek needed to do more difficult. 

“No, man. You have to keep moving.” 

“What?”

“We should never have come here, and that’s on me, but I’m not taking you down with me. Those zombies down there are making enough noise to attract others that will make enough noise to keep the horde in place for days. We’ve seen it before in cities where they’re concentrated like this. If you move now, you can get outside of the radius, especially if I make noise from up here and keep their attention.” 

“No way.”

“We don’t have an option, Derek.” Hotch craned his neck over the side of the roof. “You might be right about the swarm down there, but we have nowhere to go. We’ll wait it out here with you.” 

“Jump the roof.” Derek nodded to the next building over. The two were separated by a narrow alley, couldn’t be more than three or four feet, just big enough for a few trash cans, and they were the same height. Hotch knew it. He’d gone on almost as many rooftop pursuits of suspects as Derek had. “That was always the plan. You can probably make across the whole block. If you’re quiet, about sneaking back down to the street, you’ll have plenty of breathing room. Should give you the space you need to hotwire a car or find more bikes.”

“Absolutely not!” Spencer ran both hands through his hair, clutching his big, beautiful brain. Unfortunately, the genius wasn’t going to be able to think a way out of this one. “You can’t make that jump on a broken ankle.” 

“No. I can’t. But you can. Listen, Reid. I’ll be fine up here. I’ll wait it out for a few days, move when I can, and meet up with the team back at the motel.”

“Then we’ll wait with you.” 

“Pretty boy, you know we were traveling light. What food and water we had is back with the bikes. Catch your breath, stretch if you need to, and then go. Go and don’t look back. You don’t have time to waste.” 

“That is not happening, Morgan! It's just not happening.”

Derek looked at Hotch. The understanding, the sorrow etched in the lines of his face made him look ten years older. “We have to think of the others, Reid. We’ll come back with one of the cars, now that we have an idea about which roads are clear.”

Rather than press his luck by insisting that they get out of the city and stay out, Derek smiled. Opening his vest, he pulled out the letter and the map. “If you don’t make it back this way, would you mind detouring up to Wisconsin? See if Sarah and Desi made it out for me.”

Reid took the map, pressing his lips to Derek’s in a sweet, chaste kiss. “We'll be back.”

Derek almost did it then. More importantly, Derek knew in that moment that he could do it, shoot himself just so Reid wouldn't try to risk returning if he made it out. Of course he didn't. He was still in a position to cover them and distract the zombies if anything went wrong. 

As Reid backed away, moving toward Hotch without taking his eyes off Derek, an explosion sounded in the street below. For the first time in months, Derek heard the cheerful yelling of a raucous group out on the town. 

Jerking himself up to look over the edge of the roof, Derek saw two pickups with a couple of kids riding in the beds, armed to the teeth. Pulled up just outside the the range of the swarm, blasting Nas and clearly trying to attract attention. A girl who couldn't have been more than seventeen, with light skin and long black braids, lit a molotov cocktail and hurled it into the middle of the swarm. The zombies ignited like the dead, desiccated corpses they were, but kept lurching toward the trucks. 

Derek had seen trained soldiers break at things like that, but the kids stayed sharp. Laughing and singing along with the stereo about black diamonds and pearls and ruling the world. They were good shots. It seemed like every bullet from their rifles found a mark between the eyes of one zombie or another. More impressively, the two drivers started rolling forward, slowly and steadily, not jarring the gunmen in the back, but taking different directions to thin the horde and lead them away. It was strategic planning that Derek wouldn't expect from civilians. Then again, bangers weren't exactly civilians. 

Slam! The sound of wood hitting brick nearby pulled Derek’s attention back from the street to the rooftop. Three large men, older than the kids in the trucks by a dozen years at least, had lowered a crudely constructed wooden bridge across the gap between the neighboring buildings. The tallest one stepped confidently out onto the creaking wood, ignoring the fall and the swarming zombies below.

He looked good. From his Timberland boots to his leather jacket, he was clean, well kempt, and fashionable, if fashion could still be considered to exist when no one had published a magazine in months. More than that, he looked well rested. He no longer had the deranged confusion of a spree killer marring his strong features. Of course, he was still pointing a gun at Derek, but Rodney Harris had hated Derek long before he’d started killing. 

“Derek Fucking Morgan.” The corners of Rodney’s mouth were downturned and he shook his head sadly, never once taking his eyes off Derek’s face. “We heard gunfire and knew there was someone alive over here. Alive and in trouble. This was supposed to be a rescue mission.”

“Isn’t it? This is a brave new world, Rodney. I’m not here to arrest you.” 

“You ain’t gonna believe how much I regret this shit, but if you’re bit, you’ve got two options and they both end in a bullet. We don’t wait for folks to turn, and we don’t take chances with the wounded in Chi-town. I’m going to tell you that your sisters are safe, because I know you came here looking for them, and then I’m going to give you sixty seconds to say goodbye to your boys. After that you can choose. Do yourself, or I do you. No judgment either way. However you want to go out, that’s up to you, but sixty seconds starts now.” 

“Any of that change if I haven’t been bitten?” Pulling his pant leg up, Derek showed his swollen, bruising calf to Rodney Harris, ignoring the guns that Hotch and Reid both had leveled at the convicted killer protectively. 

The big man grinned. “Fuck yeah that changes things!” His gun disappeared into a holster at his side. “Broken leg’s nothing! You know, I mean, sorry or whatever. Shit looks painful. We got a doctor over by the Center, though. Patch up a broken ankle like it’s nothing. Movies and shit, too, if you got to stay off it for a while. Wasn’t lying about your sisters, either, dog. I can’t believe you’re alive, man. Desiree is going to flip. Derek fucking Morgan. Course you are.” Rodney didn’t hesitate at all, he didn’t even look at Reid and Hotch, just offered Derek a hand and pulled him up effortlessly into a hug. After a solid three count, he slid around under Derek’s right arm, supporting most of his weight easily. 

Derek felt an answering smile on his own face. They had hated each other for years, never knowing that they were victims of the same abuser, but even though he had never really reconciled with Rodney, he was glad to see him. So much had changed that it was good to know someone from his childhood was still alive, even his childhood bully. “It’s good to see you, man.” 

“Course it is. Handsome brother like me, I know you missed me son.” 

Laughing, Derek let Rodney help him across the rickety bridge. The few zombies left below barely looked up. Most had already swarmed away, following the two trucks. “Maybe I did. You said my sisters were at the Center? I’ve got a note from them says they were evacuating up to Wisconsin.” 

“Yeah. A lot of folks tried that, but trying to get out of town was a death trap. I wouldn’t know. Back then I was still safe and sound in Stateville, but apparently the highways were all deadlocked and there were infected trying to smash their way into cars and shit. Not a lot of people survived to turn back, but you’ll recognize some of the old neighborhood. Lot of them never left. You know what old folks are like.” 

“Yeah. I know.” When his grandmother finally finished paying off her house, she’d said it was the first thing she’d ever owned clear of the bank. Her own piece of the great City of Chicago. The woman had been determined to stay there until she died. And she had, too young at seventy-two, long before the outbreak. Owning property, something solid, without a landlord or a bank looking over your shoulder, was important to a lot of people. Even if that property was in an area where you were just as likely to see a driveby as you were to see a delivery van. “You said folks went to the Center, though?”

Rodney grinned again. “Wait’ll you see it man. The whole community did its thing, and we survived. We are surviving. It’s what we do, right?” 

“Damn right.”


	6. The Center

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home is the people, but it can also be a place.

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” -Kurt Vonnegut 

As a child, Derek had looked at the Center and seen a castle. It had been the nicest building he ever set foot in, more modern than his school, more impressive than the police station where his dad worked, bigger than the clinic where they went when he was sick. Unfortunately, his experiences with the director had dulled the feeling, tarnished the symbol until it was nothing more than a means to an end. Until it was just a way out of the neighborhood. A way to make something of his life. Now, returning after the end of the world, it seemed to rise on ramparts once again. The Center loomed as tall as anything, especially since it was one of only four buildings still standing in a six block radius. Everything else had been demolished, completely bombed out, and the rubble used to build an enormous wall. Only three small apartment buildings had been allowed to remain standing like sentinels around the community center and the perfectly maintained practice yard. 

Whistling a low, impressed note, Reid turned to Rodney. “It’s incredible that you managed to do all this.”

“Most of this was done before I got here,” the former spree killer said, shaking his head and giving Reid a slow, lopsided smile of agreement. “I heard the buildings were full of bodies and zombies when they knocked them down, too. Cops did some shit in the neighborhood. Fucking racists. Didn’t care about collateral damage down here. Not like on the Gold Coast. Ritch bitches fell anyway, though, and folks around here took it back.” 

There was a story there and Derek wanted to hear it. The problem was, he couldn’t hear anything. The pain in his leg vanished. Rodney’s supportive arm seemed to fall away. Or maybe Derek pushed it away. He couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he was running, adrenaline letting him cross the distance in seconds until he was right in front of her, hands on her shoulders, feeling the solid reality of her thin frame. 

“Derek?” Sarah’s eyes were wide, but her face was so still. A statue of disbelief. “Derek?” she whispered again. 

“Hey there sister girl.” 

Slowly reality came back to him and Derek’s leg buckled in overwhelming pain. As he collapsed, Sarah sprang to life, grabbing him before he landed on his ass, sliding a shoulder under his arm to keep him upright. 

“What’s wrong?” she demanded, wrapping his arm firmly around her and supporting more of his weight than a stranger looking at her slender shoulders would expect. Sarah had always been stronger than she looked. 

“Just twisted my ankle or something,” Derek said, wincing. “It’s nothing. A little swollen.” 

“Uh huh.” Raising a skeptical eyebrow, she helped him into the building and onto a bench. Reid and Hotch hung back, talking things out with Rodney and the heavily armed teenagers that seemed to loiter inside the wall but outside the community center. Between the two of them, they could handle whatever negotiations needed to be made. Derek was with Sarah, and he wasn’t faking the injury. 

It was all he could do not to yelp when she pulled off his boot. “Gentle, sis! I know you’re mad at me, but damn girl!” 

“Yeah. I don’t need an x-ray to know that this is broken, Derek.” 

“Can a GNP make that kind of a diagnosis?” Derek gave her his best teasing big brother smile. “Don’t I need to see a real doctor?”

“Oh, you’re going to need a doctor, baby boy.” Standing up, she slapped the back of his head lightly. “The hell were you thinking, running on an ankle like this?” 

As soon as she hit him, his smile grew into a helpless grin. “Guess I wasn’t.” 

“Guess you weren’t,” she agreed, but the sparkle in her eyes belied the scolding posture and she wrapped her arms around him again. “Damn it’s good to see you.” 

For a moment, the guy who always knew what to say was at a loss for words. Everything he wanted to say about thinking she was dead, apologizing for not coming sooner, joking about infrequent visits, remembering their mother, asking about Desiree, telling her about Reid, begging to know her story, everything he could possibly say seemed to ram together in his throat, choking him. He didn’t say anything at all. Luckily, a kid that couldn’t have been more than ten years old turned up with a cart full of medical supplies and Sarah went back to messing around with Derek’s ankle. There was plenty of stuff he could say about her torturing him. 

While he was being tortured by her competent, dispassionate care, Derek took a look at his surroundings. It was the Center, just as he remembered it, a little worn around the edges from heavy use, but no major cosmetic changes had happened to the walls, the front desk, or the lobby. The bench where he was suffering from his sister’s efficient attention was the same bench where he’d once waited for his mother to pick him up after football practice. He could see the small heart carved deep into the wood where someone named JD had once declared his love for Ashanti. Both of them had been before his time. He wondered if either of them were still alive, but that wasn’t a new feeling. Even as a kid, he’d wondered if they’d made it out of the neighborhood.

The changes in the Center weren’t cosmetic, but they were undeniable. All the change was in the people. At certain times of day—after school, Saturday mornings—the Center had bustled, but now it seemed full to bursting. Back then, when the halls were full they had been full of young boys, mostly ten to thirteen years old, though a few high school students made a habit of coming back for added practice during their school’s off season. There were still plenty of kids, but they were an even mix of girls and boys, toddlers were running around with the older kids, and indulgent adults kept half an eye on the proceedings while they went about their business. The boys on the football team had always been black—a simple fact of Chicago neighborhoods and housing discrimination—and that held mostly true for everyone in the Center now. 

Still, as there always had been in the neighborhood, there were a few visible exceptions. He recognized Mr. X, the high school history teacher who had been young when Derek learned about the Vietnam War from him, chasing after a pair of toddling twins that shared his eyes and east asian complexion. A white boy who looked like he should have been in one of those high school classes sauntered through, carrying large boxes with a pack of other kids. Derek didn’t recognize him, but he could read the way the kid joked with his friends easily enough to understand that he was comfortable here. That this was his home, too. Just as Sarah was finishing up, velcroing him into an uncomfortable boot cast, he saw Maria Alvarez, one of Juan’s daughters from the old corner store, stride past with a heavy backpack and arms full of grocery bags. That was when he realized who the people were. In this one building, in the Center that had once been a castle of hope and now was once again, the whole neighborhood was alive. He smiled again, helplessly. It was too perfect to be real, like a dream he’d never dared dream come true.

“Desiree around?” he asked Sarah, after she pronounced his bone set, while admonishing him to keep off of it and use the crutches. 

Startled, she looked up at him and grinned. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “She is.”

Derek waited patiently, but Sarah didn’t say anything more. Finally, he said, “If I promise to use the crutches, can we go see her?” 

“Sure.” Sarah didn’t move.

“What is it?” There were a thousand reasons Sarah might not tell him where Desi was, and Derek’s mind flashed through the worst of them. If she wasn’t dead, she might still be trapped, exploited. As a kindergarten teacher, Desi didn’t have the same valuable skills that a nurse like Sarah did. She could be paying for her safety here some other way. The way General Smith back in Virginia liked to make beautiful women pay. And she might be dead. So many people broke. Derek had seen it so many times. Sarah might be keeping her somewhere, a reanimated corpse in a room that wouldn’t be safe for any of these people.

“No!” Sarah grabbed him by the shoulders. “Derek. Baby boy, no, it’s nothing bad. I was just wondering whether or not I should surprise you. Desi’s fine. So is your nephew.” 

“Nephew?”

His name was Isaiah Morgan-Williams, and he was so small. He was darker than Derek, like Desi, and he already had a soft crown of black curls. Looking into his big, black eyes was like looking into the future and when he smiled, Derek’s heart broke. Desiree took the baby out of his arms gently, and Sarah pulled Derek close, letting him cling to her and sob desperately into her shoulder. If things had gone just a little differently on the road or during the race through Chicago, he would have missed this. The thought was unbearable. 

Fortunately, Hotch and Reid were off helping the kids with guns do—something, so Derek was alone with his sisters in the little apartment. They had seen him cry before. As much as he wanted to be strong for them both, wanted to be the man of the house, what they needed from him was different from what his team needed. He could lose it a little, safe at home, in a way he couldn’t when the team was on the job. 

Unfortunately, little was the right word for the shared apartment. Between Sarah, Desi, Isaiah, and the baby’s father, there wasn’t so much as a couch for Derek. Sarah gave him a couple of pain pills and showed him back to the Center. There was a room—an old office, if he remembered right—full of mattresses, and she directed him to sleep on one near a wall so that no one stepped on him once night fell. Exhausted, Derek obeyed. He barely woke in the dark when Reid slipped in next to him, took stock of the soft snores of the dormitory’s other occupants, and drifted off again. 

When he woke up for real, the sun was high and he was once again alone, both on the mattress and in the dormitory. Levering himself up off the floor with his new crutches, he went to explore. Every inch of space in the Center was being used, but some of it hadn’t really changed. Injured as they were, Derek’s feet still brought him to the kitchen automatically. The people he passed in the hall all smiled and welcomed him by name, though none of them tried to stop him to talk. All of them seemed to be pretty busy, heading over to the basketball courts, down to the locker rooms, or outside to the old football fields. He didn’t know what they were going to go do, but he’d been right about the kitchen. 

The three long tables still stretched across the small makeshift cafeteria and mismatched tables and chairs were crammed in around the edges. In Derek’s memory, those tables were crowded with boys and pizza boxes after a big win, but now it was mostly empty, just a few teenagers crouched over bowls of oatmeal. It looked more like a shelter for runaways or an alternative to juvie than a community center. That impression lasted almost a full minute as Derek collected a bowl of his own and slopped some of the gelatinous porridge into it. 

With a shout, one of the young men leapt up, vaulted the table he was sitting at, and bounced up to Derek with a brilliant smile that stretched the scar tissue on his once handsome face. “Derek Morgan! I heard you were back in town.” 

“James.” Grabbing his hand, Derek pulled the twenty year old kid in for a hug. “It’s good to see you man!” 

“I’m good to see,” James agreed, grinning. “Not everyone came through the apocalypse as pretty as me.” 

That was an open invitation to ask, so Derek did. James probably dealt with enough dithering from people who politely avoided looking at him. “What’s up with all that, son?” Derek gestured to his own face indicating the range of James’s scarring. “You get too hot for yourself to handle?” 

Bouncing a little with laughter, James punched Derek’s shoulder playfully. “Naw, player. Got caught in the fires when the popo strafed the hood. Shit got pretty intense for a minute there.” 

“I’ll bet.” Derek had known things got bad when the cities started to fall, but for the government to bomb local neighborhoods, well. There was nothing he could say to that as an FBI agent. All he could do was respond as James’s friend. “Glad you made it out, man. Can’t even say how much. I can’t believe how many familiar faces I’m seeing around this old place.” 

“Yeah.” James looked a little embarrassed and a little proud. “Well, when the shit hit, we came home. You know I was in Evanston when zombies started to be something other than a fucking horror movie plot.” 

“North Western,” Derek said, filling the silence that came while they both considered the future a kid like James could have had. 

“Yeah. But when I heard how bad things were getting down here, cops shooting people that might not have started out dead, well I had to come home. Check on my moms. Protect the block. I wasn’t the only one. A lot of folks who weren’t here when the outbreak happened came home.” 

“Like I should have,” Derek said, guilt filling his tone. 

“No way. We all knew you had a job to do.” Once again, James looked embarrassed. “For a while there, I sort of thought you might come in with the black helicopter cavalry, spraying a cure over everyone and bringing all the zombies back to life.” Derek felt even worse until James said, “Thinking about that was just about the only thing that got me through the really bad part.”

“The really bad part?”

“B, I have burns over, like, seventy percent of my body. For a long ass time, I was just lying in bed, covered in bandages, listening to the guns on the wall. For a long ass time, we were just protecting that wall. Didn’t patrol, didn’t look for other survivors or visit the neighbors, didn’t do anything. Shit got depressing, man.” 

“Things are better now?” 

“Yeah, Derek.” James smiled like he was talking to a child. “Things are better now. I gotta bounce, man. I’m on the wall for a couple hours, but we’ll catch up later. Wanna hear all about the adventures of Derek Morgan, FBI. You should come to Meeting tonight, too. Preacher ‘ll explain it better than I can.” 

After another brief hug, Derek nodded and watched the young man bounce away with all the energy and hope of a twenty year old and none of the lethargy one might expect from a disfigured victim who had just admitted to a months long bout of depression. Apparently, there was a preacher. A charismatic man of god could do a lot of damage in a small community, and Derek wondered if they’d escaped one cult of personality back in Virginia only to stumble across a second in Chicago. If they had, this one would be much harder to flee. Derek wouldn’t leave without his family, and he sure as hell wouldn’t leave James. He’d already failed once to protect the boys of his neighborhood by keeping silent about his experiences with the Center. There was no way that Derek would abandon his community a second time. 

Keeping his head down, gathering information before acting, was the smartest thing he could do. Derek finished his breakfast and hobbled off to find Desi. Playing with the baby would make him feel better, and it would give him an opportunity to talk to his sister about the changes in the old neighborhood. Limping out of the center and across the sunny, yard to the apartment building didn’t give him much hope. Everywhere he looked, he saw people working and training. There might have been more guns than there had been back at the General’s base in Virginia. At the same time, he had to admit that the guns were necessary. He had to admit that he’d be dead if Rodney hadn’t shown up with guns and molotov cocktails the day before. Derek didn’t know what to think. 

Still, he knew what he wanted to think. This was his family. His community. They wouldn’t fall victim to some narcissist. Not after the way they’d been victimized before. Not after everything they’d suffered. Not after surviving the end of the world. He wanted so badly to believe James. He wanted so badly to believe that things had already gotten better. Even stumbling on crutches through the bombed out rubble of his old home, he wanted to hope.


	7. The Prayer

“If a person takes comfort in his or her faith upon divinity in times of distress, then who the hell am I to say that the person is delusional.” - Abhijit Naskar

After taking three flights of stairs on crutches he still wasn’t quite used to, when Derek got to Desi’s door, he thought that maybe he’d finally lost it. He was feeling a little beat and a lot like sitting down, and the happy, laughing voices on the other side of the lock were completely out of place. 

At least, one of them was. Without bothering to knock, Derek turned the tarnished brass doorknob and let himself in.

“Garcia?” 

She grinned up at him, bouncing his nephew gently in her lap. “Hey there sleeping beauty. I was going to see if I could wake you with a kiss, but your doctor said that you needed the rest.” 

“Baby girl, you’re so magical that a kiss from you could wake the dead. So on second thought, maybe try to keep that on lock down.”

“Hey now, I deny any knowledge of or culpability for any and all waking dead.”

Derek laughed. Right there on the beat up old sofa were two of the best things in his life, for all that Isaiah was a new addition. Desiree came in from the kitchen, carrying a laundry basket. That made three good things, all in one room. While he couldn’t shake the idea that something would happen soon to show how fragile this reunion was, Derek wanted to be exactly where he was for as long as he could.

“I thought I heard my brother out here. How are you feeling, boo?” 

“Happy,” he said honestly. “For the first time in a long time.” 

Rolling her eyes and shaking her head, Desi put the laundry basket down. “Always gotta pull out the charm, don’t you?” 

“Oh he doesn’t do it consciously,” Garcia said. “Your brother is just naturally a prince.” 

“And you are naturally a queen, baby girl.”

“Or, you are both ridiculous,” Desi said, pushing Derek gently toward a chair. “Sit down and put that leg up right now. Sarah said you need to rest.” 

Obediently, Derek sat. “I’m resting. I’m resting. I’m also wondering how my girl got here, though. We left you holed up well outside the city.”

“Ah ha!” Garcia raised an eyebrow. Derek could tell that it cost her something not to be able to gesture with an emphatic finger, but her arms were full of his nephew. “I told Hotch you’d be upset not to come get us yourself. However, as your brilliant and beautiful sister said, you need rest. You won’t be able to drive for a month at least with that cast on your leg, and the rest of us don’t want to. Besides, you’re our superhero. We need you at full strength if we’re cross country road tripping through the apocalypse.” She exchanged a look with Desi that probably seemed subtle to the two of them. “So we thought we’d stay here for a while.” 

“Uh huh.” It wasn’t a bad thing. If Garcia was here, Derek’s whole family was in one place. If Derek’s whole family was in one place, then whatever was wrong with here at the Center had the potential to destroy all of them. 

“Oh relax big brother,” Desi said. “You’re stuck here with us for at least a month while you heal. If you’re going to be jumping at shadows the whole time, it’s going to get old quick.”

“I am not jumping at shadows,” Derek said. But he was. The whole day passed in fits and starts as he would lose himself in the joy of being with family only to suddenly realize that everything was about to go wrong. Even when it didn’t go wrong at all. Things seemed to be building to a head as the day went on. Desi and Sarah both wanted to go to the prayer meeting that night. Apparently they always attended the prayer meeting. 

Still, it was probably smart to go. Ephesians had something to say about knowing your enemy. 

The prayer meeting was in the gymnasium of course. It was the only space large enough to fit everyone who might want to attend, with bleachers enough to seat folks that didn’t want to crowd in down on the basketball court. It started with a song, of course. Nobody made a joyful noise unto the lord like Derek’s neighbors. Singing and clapping, it was hard to remember to be suspicious. It was hard to remember that everything was about to go wrong. That was probably why the preacher had them do it. 

Then he stood up. Pastor Williams was thin, dark, and older than Derek would have expected. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. The sort of quiet that made folks lean in to listen. He was good. Very good. He started out talking about his day. How he’d gone down to DePaul University with a small group to trade with the students holled up on the campus there. It was a trip and a half through the zombie infested streets, and the travelers had fought and killed just to make it to the blown out first floor of a dormitory. 

“And of course, they didn’t let us up,” the preacher said. Derek wasn’t surprised that was how it started. Of course that was how it would start. The enemy. The other. Us and Them. It was textbook community control. “Those kids sent down their baskets from their rooftop gardens, and we sent up toilet paper, candy bars, and the usual salvage. But would they meet us face to face?”

Around the gym there was a chorus of nos. Derek’s heart sped like a race car. 

“Would those kids come down and shake my hand?”

“No way,” the congregation muttered. 

“They’re safe up there,” the pastor said silkily, and Derek’s mouth filled with the coppery taste of adrenaline. “Nothing can harm them. No zombies. No sickness. No enemies.”

“No toilet paper,” someone shouted, and everyone laughed.

“Now Devon Robinson, you know better.” Pastor Williams raised an eyebrow. “Those children have survived. Just as we have survived. Maybe they don’t have Jesus, but they’ve sure got something we do. What do they have?”

“Each other,” everyone said.

“What do we have?”

“Each other,” the community said with one voice. 

“That’s right. If those poor, scared kids don’t want to come down from their rooftops, that’s just fine. We’ll go to our neighbors, but we won’t go in fear. We won’t turn away the traveler, or the leper, or the needy. Today we are blessed, brothers and sisters. I know some of you have wondered. Some of you have lost faith. Even I, in my darkest moments, have asked God if we were alone. If all the living people left on this earth were here in Chicago, at our community center, the college, and those rough fishermen out on the lake. Yet our own Derek Morgan has traveled all the way through perdition, from Washington D.C. across half the country to be with his family. Welcome home, Derek.” 

Cheering and singing followed that pronouncement as everyone seemed to decide that a big band of angels had come after Derek to carry him home. It was nice. Especially when Sarah and Desi started in on hugging him again. Especially when Garcia bumped her fist lightly against his chin. Especially when Reid kissed him gently. Especially when JJ laughed. Especially when Hotch shook his head at Jack and Henry dancing with the other children. It was home. They were home. They were all home at last. 

The team stayed in Chicago through the winter. For the first two months, Derek stayed holed up with his family, healing, watching the children, making time with Reid, and helping out where he could. Once he felt solid on his leg again, he went out with their patrols. That was how he saw the rooftop gardens and skywalks between buildings on the DePaul campus. He saw the insular community out on the frozen lake, huddled in their boats, weathering winter storms by mooring on the docks and praying that no zombies happened close. The dead were slower in the winter, sluggish in the cold and frozen solid when the temperature dropped low enough. During those times, the community did what they could to burn and behead as many as possible. 

However, unlike Virginia, the people of Chicago didn’t seem to do it out of anger or a desire for revenge. The patrols were to protect the neighborhood. To keep zombies away from the family. That made a whole world of difference. The winter was long, but there were strawberries from the rooftops of the college, songs every evening, and hooch from a still that tasted a hundred times better once Reid and Park got involved in the process. They lost one person, a thirty-two year old ex-con.   
It was a tragedy. He’d been bitten during a routine patrol, when a zombie hadn’t been beheaded properly before being thrown on the pyre, and had suddenly become much faster as the heat of the flames thawed it out. The young man shot the zombie. Then he shot himself with the next bullet, barely taking the time to look at his friends and say, “Peace.” It was a hero’s death.

The community mourned him. His body was burned on the same pyre as the zombie that bit him, but back at the Center there was a proper funeral. Everyone told stories about his life. The time he’d shoplifted from Maria, and she’d made him clean the graffiti from her storefront instead of calling the cops. A rap he’d done about the Bubonic Plague in Mr. X’s history class. Some friends of his did a breakdance to remember his b-boy days. Then Rodney stood up. He told the story of how they’d escaped from Stateville together when the infection started spreading through the prison and a heroic guard opened the doors to give everyone a fighting chance. For someone who’d survived so much to be killed so easily. It was awful. He’d been loved, and he was missed.

But six new babies were born that winter, and overall people were happy. It seemed that in Chicago, surrounded by zombies, life went on. 

A body had to wonder why the Center survived the way it did. No one seemed to know. Of course the preacher said that God had work for them to do, and plenty believed it, but Derek had never had that kind of faith. It was James who said it. One cold February night, he invited Derek and Rodney outside to look up to the sky and toast the death of the man who had once told them to. 

“It’s because of us, you know,” he’d said, taking a long pull from the bottle and wiping away his tears. 

“What is?” Rodney had asked, his voice softer than Derek had ever known it to be. 

“The neighborhood survived because of us,” James said. 

“You’re drunk, kid.” Derek laughed a little, swallowing a few tears of his own. “None of us were even here.” 

“Some of us were here,” James insisted drunkenly. “There were hundreds of us. I’ve talked to some guys. I’ve talked to a lot of guys, and you know, Derek. You know from the investigation. That it was most of the neighborhood, practically. Most of the guys in the neighborhood, we’d already survived the worst thing that could happen to us. Our families survived that. That shit. That bastard. What the fuck is an apocalypse compared to that?”

Rodney had laughed too, then, and taken the bottle from James. But he hadn’t disagreed. Derek hadn’t disagreed either. Sometimes he had nightmares about zombies, but he had nightmares about Carl Buford more often. It felt good to talk about it. Derek wasn’t the type to get emotional or talk about his feelings, most of the time. In a different world, he probably wouldn’t have revisited that chapter of his past with Rodney or James. Still, they understood him in a way most people couldn’t. They were part of what made Chicago home. 

Apparently, winter was the time to eradicate thousands of zombies and have deep, personal conversations. The team did the same thing, huddled in a small apartment with Sean, Park, and Freeman. Long after the children went to sleep, they talked about family, mistakes, and the tentative spark of hope for the future. One night JJ confessed to being cornered by the general back in Quantico, to holding up her marriage like a shield, and to knowing that the choice she had made in that moment was the reason Will was dead. That same night Freeman spoke haltingly of the things that man had made her do, of his wickedness, of how much she hated knowing he was the father of her child. 

Another night Sean recounted Lisa’s death. How she’d been bitten and turned while pregnant. How he’d killed her and cut the baby from her body. He said the smell of her body as she burned had made him vomit, and he had barely been able to look at the crying baby. He’d been so afraid that they were both dead. Dead didn’t mean silent anymore. Then he told them that he’d half hoped that Erin would would be a zombie. That she would kill him for what he’d done to her mother. Because if she was already dead, then she wouldn’t need him to be anything. But she’d been alive. Living things grew, and she’d grown on formula and goat milk and his love until he had nothing left to give. Shaking with sobs, he’d confessed that he didn’t know how much longer he could have survived if Hotch hadn’t come for him. 

Perhaps what was most notable was those who didn’t speak. The long nights of a Chicago winter gave them plenty of time to talk, but Reid didn’t make any confessions. Oh, he snuggled up to Derek. He gave what comfort he could to JJ and Freeman. But he never said anything about himself. No matter how dark the night, he never spoke of his own hurt or his own hope. He never said a word about his mother. Probably because he didn’t want to push. Chicago was good for the team. They had safety, good food, and family. Only not all of their family.

Derek didn’t want to leave. None of the team did, not even Reid. That was why the genius didn’t say anything. Instead he pretended to be as happy as Derek really was. Reid and Park went through the week long quarantine required by the DePaul kids to visit their rooftop dens and pronounced the society there insular, but secure. Reid came back loaded down with books and ready to deify the librarians, and that seemed to be the more restrained response. Park stayed up there for a month longer than Reid, and might have stayed forever. From her perspective, the only problem with the group was that the students were very serious about not allowing her to work with any live samples of the virus. The good doctor still wanted to look for a cure if she could, and wasn’t interested in surviving only for survival’s sake. Derek tried to use that to talk to Reid, but of course Spencer wasn’t putting aside his own pain for the sake of survival. He was doing it for Derek’s happiness. That was why it couldn’t be allowed. 

Reid needed to know. 

He said he didn’t. Of course he said he was fine and that Chicago was perfect. He said they had to stay, because he was Spencer Reid and his pain was always a private, desperate thing. He said they should stay, but he looked to the west. He always looked to the west. 

So they needed to go. 

Derek tried to convince Hotch, Sean, and JJ to stay behind with the kids. The road was always dangerous, and the Center felt safe. Reid needed to know what had happened to his mother, and Derek needed to see him there, but they didn’t all need to go. Naturally the team laughed at this idea. 

“Whither thou goest, go I, my prince,” Garcia said, adjusting her glasses and grinning at him. 

“I’m with her,” Hotch said, smiling sideways at the former technician. 

“Just try to leave me behind,” JJ said. 

So they were all in. Even Park and Sean came along. Only Freeman stayed behind, because she was pregnant, and she’d never been as close to the team as Park. Derek didn’t blame her in the slightest. She was in her third trimester and probably shouldn’t have gone on a long car trip in ordinary circumstances. Fighting through a wasteland full of zombies was definitely not on any OBGYN’s list of approved activities. 

Still, he would miss her on the road. She was nearly as good with a gun as JJ, and she was a decent driver, too. Saying goodbye to her was hard. She’d come a long way with them on faith, but maybe they’d delivered her to the promised land. At least one of them would stay in Chicago, safer than she could ever have been in Virginia. At least one of them had found a better life. 

Moreover, now Derek knew his family was safe and happy. He had a nephew. Though he was leaving home behind, it strengthened his heart to know it was there. No matter where he went, he did have a home. He had family, both traveling with him, and staying behind. 

On the first of April, like the fools that they were, they piled into their caravan. With fresh supplies, powerful radios to keep in touch, and long hugs from those they were leaving behind, they set out for Las Vegas. There was one last question to answer.


	8. The Asylum

_“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” -Lewis Carroll_

The southwest was empty. Derek tried to remind himself that it was always empty. They were avoiding major cities and driving through the dust bowl. Even before the fall of everything, it would have been vast, open prairie dotted with the occasional random diner that he’d rather avoid. Still, there was something eerie about being so utterly disconnected from any other people. Knowing for a fact that if one of their cars broke down no tow truck would ever come meant knowing for a fact that civilization was utterly gone. 

But the kids were all right. In their little caravan they made good time, stopping at night to camp under the stars. Of course they kept a watch, and once or twice Derek was woken by gunfire when Hotch or JJ dispatched a lone shambler. While it was important to take care, these lone zombies were no threat to a watchful group of trained agents. Most of the infected they saw had been dead for more than a year. They were slow moving and summer heat followed by winter storms had stripped most of the muscle from their corpses. The things looked more horrifying than ever, but the only real danger was tripping over one. 

Trained FBI agents weren’t going to relax their guard. Not when they still had children and civilians in the group. Beyond that, there was a feeling that despite the desolation surrounding them, they were no longer alone. In Chicago, there was hope. In Chicago, there was a home to go back to. Just as soon as they made one final stop, their group could settle. 

In the meantime, they had the long, open road. Flat, uninterrupted stretches of asphalt that they could sail over just as fast as they would have before the end of civilization without worrying about fallen trees or rockslides. Since that was more luck than they deserved, Derek adjusted his hands on the steering wheel and drove on with a smile. 

Vegas was an eye opener. Expecting it to be like Chicago, they’d gone in as a small group. This time Hotch stayed back to guard Garcia and the civilians while JJ took point. Even though Reid knew the terrain best, JJ was the right choice to lead. As the best marksman, they wanted her to clear the way. Derek followed the two of them on his bike, praying silently that this city would go better than the last.

Better was a matter of perspective, but it sure as hell was different. As they cycled past abandoned cars and houses, they saw a different kind of destruction than the running and rioting that had characterized Chicago. Most of the cars had windows shattered in the distinctive pattern left by gunfire. There were plenty of corpses around, but none of them moved. They all seemed to have been taken out with head shots or gruesomely decapitated. Half the buildings were bombed out or had been set on fire. After a moment, it clicked. 

Nearly everyone in Vegas had a gun. That was just the way things worked in Nevada. In most of the southwest, really. When order broke down, it hadn’t been the cops fighting back or targeting specific neighborhoods. Things were bound to go down differently than they had in Chicago when it looked like every single individual had taken to the streets, desperately killing anything that moved like they were the sole survivor of a horror film. Derek wondered how many of the dead hadn’t been infected. How many stranded vacationers had been wandering in a daze when they were gunned down by panicking people? 

There was no way to know, and it was too late to look for justice. Clearly survivors had turned on each other, fallen victim to infection eventually, or eaten their own bullets in despair. There were no zombie hordes in Vegas. There were plenty of rotting corpses, though. 

The facility where Reid’s mom had been living was bad, but it could have been worse. For one thing, it wasn’t a burned out shell of a building. As another grace, though there was clearly a place where bodies had been burned in an enormous pyre, someone had taken an earthmover and buried the remains in a mass grave. It wasn’t good, but at least it let Derek hope that Spencer might not have to face his mother the way JJ had done. On the other hand, it meant that they would probably have to dig for answers and even then the remains of Diana Reid weren’t likely to be easily identified. Before resorting to that, the three former FBI agents moved in to check the building. 

As always, Derek kept an eye out for anything useful as they cleared the hospital room by room. They didn’t spot any zombies, but they also didn’t find any food, drugs, or usable medical supplies. Whoever had killed and buried the infected had stripped the place like a soiled bed. Other than books and furniture too heavy to take, there was only one thing of value in the place.

In the room where Reid’s mother had once slept there was a plain white envelope sitting on the bed. Derek stared at it dizzily. He recognized the handwriting, and it didn’t belong to Diana Reid. Just one word was scrawled across the front: Spencer. It looked exactly like another envelope that Reid had found at the door to a cabin years ago. Back then the world hadn’t been ending but the kid had obviously felt like it might. Clearly the genius made the same connection, because his slender fingers trembled slightly as he opened the envelope.

_“Spencer,”_ the letter began. Reading over Reid’s shoulder, Derek could almost hear Gideon’s voice. A voice he hadn’t heard in nearly a decade. 

_“At times like this it is easy to lose hope, to break in the face of crisis. But history teaches us that catastrophes can be the greatest vehicles for social improvement humanity encounters. After the Bubonic Plague we had the Renaissance. After the Spanish Flu came the Roaring Twenties. Do I believe that such tragedies miraculously bring about times of prosperity? Of course not. What I believe is that people survive, and that survivors create things worth living for._

_“Unfortunately, I’m too much of a pragmatist to believe that the best and the brightest are the ones most likely to make it through. Whatever comes after this tragic holocaust will grow slowly, like new seedlings after a prairie fire. Most of that which exists now will be lost. Already the death tolls number in the hundreds of thousands. Soon it will be millions. If I were a better, less broken man, I would go back to work. I am sure you are doing all that you can to stem the tide of destruction with the BAU. If you’d given up hope of finding a solution, I know I would have found you here with your mother. Since I have given up that hope, submitted to the tidal wave of ruination sweeping over our civilization, I thought I might come here in your place. It is my hope to preserve something for you in the antediluvian times to come._

_“Diana is well. The professor has asked that I omit her title, and seems to be in good spirits despite the fact that I found her barricaded in this room with nearly thirty undead patients and doctors wandering the halls. She asks me to include her love in this missive, as her hands currently shake too much to write. Unhappily, it seems that in addition to the stress of the situation, she has been detoxing from her medication without adequate supervision. Don’t worry about it. I know you will anyway, so I want you to go back and read those words again. She’s fine. We have a whole hospital full of medication here, and between the two of us we’ll find something that keeps her level in your absence._

_“That said, the best cure would be your presence. If you’re reading this, then one way or another you’ve come looking. I am sorry to ask, but I need you to come a little further. I’ve been getting some people together. People I am afraid might not survive the atrocities currently happening across the globe in every place of human habitation. We’re gathering in a little farming community in Northern California, and I’ve enclosed a map hoping that you’ll join us. We have food, water, and plans to wait out the storm._

_“Former Agent Greenway is with me. Again, I don’t write this to worry you, but to give you a more complete picture of the situation. In fact, I would hope it brings you comfort. After all, she cleared the infected from this entire building with only a little help from me. Elle’s ability to meet violence with ferocity has only grown in her time as a defense contractor, but I have never once doubted her ability to protect and care for the innocent. Your mother is safe. Join us when you can._

_“Until then, I hope that your efforts to protect those less equipped than you are to deal with a crisis like this succeed more often than they fail. Given the monumentality of what we all face, that seems to be the best any of us can hope for._

_“With all sincerity,  
Jason Gideon” _

As he read the letter, Reid sank onto the bed, his long legs folding underneath him like a collapsing card table. The tears started long before he reached the end of the letter. Derek and JJ moved at exactly the same moment, sitting on either side of him, holding him up. When Spencer collapsed, it was to sob against Derek’s chest, but one of his hands found JJ’s, lacing their fingers together, seeking comfort. 

“I’m sure they made it,” JJ said.

“Gideon can do anything he puts his mind to,” Derek agreed. “The man’s a legend for a reason.” 

It was a long time before Spencer spoke at all. “I gave up on her,” he said. “I wasn’t going to come. I wasn’t ever going to come.” 

“Then it’s a good thing Gideon didn’t,” JJ said, stroking his hair. 

“A very good thing,” Spencer agreed shakily. Taking a deep breath, he sat up straight, looking Derek in the eye. “Are you up to going a little further with me? I know we were planning to go back to Chicago after Vegas.”

“Are you kidding me? I want to go almost as badly as you do. Elle was my girl. If there’s a chance she’s still out there, I have to know. Leaving this letter and going home would be like finding a message from Emily and ignoring it.” 

Spencer’s mouth twitched in a little smile as JJ agreed. “We have to follow up on this. Besides, Henry’s never seen the Pacific. Who knows when we’ll have another chance to do a real cross country road trip?”

At that, Reid laughed. Maybe it was a little hysterically, but it was laughter. 

Waiting patiently in an old roadside diner, the rest of the team welcomed them back carefully. When they found out about the message from Gideon, however, they broke into cheers of celebration. After hugs for the three members of the search party, Garcia disappeared for a few minutes and then managed to produce a cake somehow, a big chocolate sheet cake decorated with some kind of peanut butter frosting. Written in bright blue across the top were the words “Here’s Hopin’!” She confessed that she’d brought the ingredients from Chicago in case the worst happened and Reid needed cheering up. She was happy to put them to a more celebratory use. 

The cake was a huge hit, especially with the boys. Even Hotch smiled. Hearing from Gideon obviously alleviated some of the constant pressure the man felt he was under to lead them all in the total absence of any other oversight. For a little while, he was Aaron. Teasing his brother, he bounced his niece, and stole a forkful of cake from Garcia’s plate. 

Derek didn’t point out that the letter was over a year old, and that Reid might still need cheering up when they reached California. He didn’t want to drag down the party, but no one else seemed to remember that he’d gotten a letter exactly like the one Gideon had written from his sister. In that letter, Sarah told him to go to Wisconsin, but she’d never left Chicago. In the absence of real lines of communication, letters left where loved ones would look was the only option, but they were no kind of guarantee. 

“Cheer up, Morgan,” Reid said, smiling goofily and taking a huge bite of cake. “We’re going to California!”


	9. The Village

_“Courage is found in unlikely places.” - J.R.R. Tolkien_

Derek hated California. Oh he had some fond memories of Cali. The team had worked more than a few cases there, and the time Spencer made out with a starlet while still over-analyzing every single move the girl made would never not be funny. Further back, in his college football days, he’d played at the Rose Bowl once. That had been a dream come true for every kid on the team. Riding high on love of the game, they’d gone down to LA afterward with one of the assistant coaches for a chaperone. Some of the guys swore they saw Halle Berry walking down the street. That had been bullshit. Or at least, Derek hadn’t seen her. Those had been the _Strictly Business_ days and everybody was in love. Ribbing those guys had been too easy, and it had also cemented some friendships that he kept for decades. Those days had only been the start, too. Derek had done a lot of traveling in his time, and California, like the man said, knew how to party.

So once the state had been an important landscape in the map of Derek’s life. Unfortunately, driving through it after the end of the world was still hell. First they passed through part of Death Valley. Ominously named or not, they had few options coming out of Nevada the way they were, and it wasn’t really much worse than the desert they were leaving. In fact, there weren’t many dead wandering it, and that part was just fine with Derek. The problem was what came after: the rest of California. 

Between the mountains, the forests, and the dense population centers, the state was a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Either there were zombie hordes to be avoided or fallen trees in the middle of nowhere blocking the road. The steep, mountainous back roads made any sort of car trouble a serious hazard, while the large number of people who had initially tried to flee the cities meant that most of the gas stations they passed were tapped dry for any kind of useful supplies. 

Things went from bleak and sun-parched to green and overgrown. There was no middle ground in California. Or maybe it was all middle ground. Either way, driving through took long days and far more fighting and backtracking than Derek wanted to do. Once they crossed into the northern part of the state, they were also treated to a dreary sort of rain that never seemed to stop. Derek was careful, but the steady drip made it too easy to zone out behind the wheel. The metronome rhythm of the windshield wipers lulling him into his old driving habits. He should have known better. He had to slam on the breaks when he saw the gate across the road, melting out of the rain like the sailboat in a magic eye picture. 

“Good afternoon travellers!” The woman who appeared in the little gatehouse was slim and tough. She had a shock of short white hair and looked to be in her early sixties, but she clearly knew how to use the shotgun in her hands. 

Derek showed her his hands immediately. The last thing they wanted to do was pick a fight. “Good afternoon, ma’am. My name is Derek Morgan. I was an FBI agent back when there was an FBI, and I would be happy to show you my badge. We don’t mean to trespass, and if you want us to turn around we will. But we have kids with us, so I’d appreciate it if you could put that gun away.”

Obligingly, the woman did just that, setting the shotgun down on the ledge of the gatehouse and smiling. “FBI, eh? You must be here looking for Gideon.”

“We are!” Reid said, practically vibrating in the passenger seat. “Is he here? He left me a letter telling me to come here, but I only found it a few days ago.” 

Brown eyes flicked to Reid and seemed to soften further. Derek would have said she looked sad, which made him a little suspicious. “Yes, he’s here. You’re all more than welcome to go through and see him, so long as you’ll let me check your vehicles for anyone who’s been recently bitten. I’m sorry to be so suspicious, but there it is. Accidents happen and we have to be careful.” 

“Of course!” Reid lept out of the SUV incautiously and started opening doors for her. “I’m Spencer Reid. Doctor Spencer Reid. Maybe you know my mother, Professor Reid? She would have come here with Gideon and Agent Greenway.” 

“Sure, I know Diana. She’ll be happy to see you, Spencer. Talks about you all the time. I’m Martha Winston.”

Reid stopped and stared at her for a moment. Then he shook his head and offered her his hand. “Of course. It’s a pleasure to meet you Ms. Winston.” 

Smirking, Martha asked, “You recognize me?” 

“Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up anything painful.” 

“That’s just fine Spencer. I expect you’re going to recognize a lot of people in our little community, if the things your mother says are true. Gideon gathered us up when things started to go bad. He said there was no shame if folk who had survived one traumatic event needed a little help to survive another.”

Nodding in agreement seemed natural to Reid, though Derek had no idea what they were talking about. Fortunately, Reid could always be counted on to explain things that interested him. Often at great length. Once Martha opened the gate and they were back on the road, trees opening up on either side of them to reveal lush rolling farmland in the light mist, the good doctor did just that. 

“She was an early victim of the Green River Killer in Washington State. As a prostitute that managed to escape, the police didn’t take her testimony seriously before Gideon interviewed her. While she wasn’t able to identify Gary Ridgway, her description of the experience helped Gideon understand the behavior patterns he was seeing.” 

Derek nodded. The Green River Killer had been a big one. Though the collar hadn’t happened until 2001, just before he joined the BAU, he knew that the attacks had gone on throughout the 80s and 90s. An early victim was probably only someone Gideon interviewed a few times nearly thirty years ago. “That was why she looked sympathetic when you said you had a letter from Gideon. He’s been gathering survivors.” 

The corner of Reid’s mouth twitched up in a smile. “He always did feel a connection to the people he saved.” 

“I thought Frank severed that.” 

From the backseat Park asked who Frank was. Derek let Spencer field that particular question and concentrated on driving. Sometimes it was too easy to forget that they had civilians along. People like Sean and Park who were still part of the family, but didn’t know every case because they hadn’t been living in the team’s pockets for the last ten years. Neither had Gideon and Elle. That was going to be something to remember when they finally met up. People changed. Derek only hoped Reid wasn’t disappointed. 

He sure wasn’t disappointed by the settlement they were seeing. Farms stretched out around the road with neat vegetable patches, grazing cows, and huddling chickens all going about their business. People were all over, working, laughing, standing alone or sitting together talking, for the most part ignoring the drizzle. It was like driving through another world, one he hadn’t seen in two years. It was like, other than a rough fence and a guard at the gate, the apocalypse hadn’t touched this place. 

The town was small, just a main street with a few buildings on either side of it. Other than the brick town hall, they were pretty ugly. Plaster and aluminum siding didn’t weather all that well, and it looked like the whole town had been abandoned for quite a while before Gideon decided to set up shop here. In Derek’s estimation, the place had been left to rot for at least ten years, though someone who knew what they were doing seemed to be in charge of the restoration. 

While the buildings looked run down, the people sure didn’t. A couple of old folks were playing checkers on a porch with tall glasses of lemonade. A few kids were jumping in the mud puddles. Sure, the only cars Derek saw were the ones the team was driving, but otherwise it looked like a regular small town. When he parked and got out, he was greeted by waves from the checker players, but not overt interest. It felt strange. No one could afford to be that casual about visitors. Even in Chicago they’d been more cautious, and that had been three relatively unarmed men showing up without vehicles. It didn’t make sense to be so lax about security. A few questions from a gate guard were hardly enough to ensure that newcomers were completely safe. 

“As I live and breathe: Derek Morgan.” Elle was leaning against the red brick of the town hall building. She had a smile on her face, a jagged scar on her neck, and black combat boots on her feet. Otherwise she looked exactly like she had the last time he’d seen her. If her hair was an inch or two shorter and she was wearing a little less makeup, he hardly noticed. She hadn’t aged a day. 

Seconds later Reid was up the steps and hugging her. Derek moseyed over to say hello and by the time he got there Gideon was pushing open the double doors. After that it was hugs all around. Elle needed to be introduced to Henry and Sean. Everyone wanted to meet Erin, bringing her into the warm brick building and out of the gentle California drizzle quickly became the number one priority. Even Park received a friendly welcome. 

“So, Gideon.” Though he was obviously ecstatic to see his mentor again, poor Reid was seconds away from vibrating out of his skin. 

“You’re mom’s fine,” Gideon said, echoing his letter. 

She wasn’t, of course. Diana had a room in one of the dilapidated houses near the center of the little town. It was a mess. Books were strewn over every surface, and the woman barely looked up when her son came in. Both Elle and Gideon started apologizing. It was apparently a bad day, despite her medication. Spencer ignored them both. 

“Hi Mom.” 

Outside, the rain stopped. Diana Reid looked at her son. “Spencer! Where have you been? I’ve been so worried about you!”

Reid laughed until he started crying, and Derek slipped out of the room after Gideon, giving them a little time alone. 

It was just as well, since Derek wanted a minute with Elle. Abrupt though it might be, he had serious concerns about security. Elle just laughed at him. 

“Everyone else is dead, Derek. What do we have to be afraid of?” 

Staring at her blankly was the only option. For a long moment, he couldn’t say anything. Then he managed to croak, “Chicago’s still there.”

“Is it? That’s great!” She laughed again. “Relax, Derek. I was joking.” 

“Just my old hood,” he said. It felt strange to have to explain. “And a few other hold outs. But they’re surrounded. Under siege. Why aren’t you?” 

Elle shrugged. “Maybe because we didn’t set down in the middle of one of the most populous cities in the world? Don’t get me wrong, Derek, in that first year Gideon and I did a lot of clean up. He knew he needed a place like this the moment the outbreaks started, and he knew he needed someone like me to get it done.” 

“Like you?” 

“I don’t feel bad when I kill them.” She shrugged. “I’m not an idiot. I know what that makes me. So do you. So did Hotch when I left the BAU. Maybe he was right. Maybe that would have made me a bad cop, but it doesn’t make me a bad person to have on your team after the end of the world. There are no zombies around here because I killed them. It’s easy. They’re stupid, slow, and they don’t use weapons. People fall because they don’t use basic disease transmission precautions, or because they feel guilty about decapitating the dead body of a six year old.”

Clearly she was waiting for him to object or take offense, but she wasn’t wrong. There was no reason at all for a soldier with a machine gun to go down in the face of a horde of infected. As long as a person kept their head and didn’t stop firing, there was nothing to worry about. Yet in the last two years, Derek had seen any number of people die just that way. They just stopped firing. Gave up. 

“Survivors don’t give up.” 

Elle reached out and took Derek’s sunglasses. Sliding them easily over her own eyes, she grinned. “No. We don’t.” Leading the way out into the sunshine, she gave him a little tour of the town assuring him it would be very different from the one Gideon was giving Hotch and JJ. 

It was. Oh, she introduced him around and pointed out spots of local interest, but she lead him straight to the point. In a big red barn made of cinder blocks and freshly painted wood, she showed him a treasure. From the heat radiating through the wood and the heady scent of baking bread, he guessed what it would be, but he was still astounded when she threw open the door to reveal the huge steel fermentation vats. 

“Welcome back to civilization! Hey Aziz, my friend here had a long drive. Mind pouring him a cold one?”

Aziz was an extremely accommodating man in his early thirties. If Derek had been anyone else, he would have noticed the cheerful smile, dark eyes, or light accent first. Since he was a profiler, he noticed the slight limp that came from a prosthetic leg. Poor guy had been the final victim of a mutilator, but he’d survived. He’d been saved, and Gideon had remembered him. When Elle found him, he’d been holed up in a micro-brewery in Portland, fending off infected with molotov cocktails. He was more than happy to pour a pint of his best for a member of the BAU. 

Of course nothing in the brewery was cold, but the farmhouse next to it had a cellar full of barrels. Aziz pulled three glasses from an already tapped keg, and they sat out on the farmhouse porch to catch up. Derek spared half a moment to think about the rest of the team, but Gideon could help them get settled. 

“When was the last time you had a beer?” Aziz asked amicably.

“Wrong question, my man. Chicago, and that was only three, going on four weeks ago. Took us a while to get here via Las Vegas, but not forever. They still have plenty of salvage in the big cities, not like driving through California where every gas station seems to have been looted long before we passed through.”

“That stuff hasn’t gone flat yet?”

“Nah. It’s not great, but Reid says it won’t make anyone sick. It just mostly tastes like piss now.”

Elle grinned. “So when was the last time you had a beer this good?” 

Derek laughed. “Gotta be nearly five years back now. Worked a case in Wisconsin and they had some good local stuff. This is right up there, though man.” 

Blushing, Aziz demurred. “Folks around here like it, but I still haven’t got the recipe perfected yet.”

“Well I will be your guinea pig any time,” Elle said, clinking her glass against his. 

The whole town was like that: relaxed and welcoming, as though the world hadn’t ended. In Chicago Derek always felt the pressure of the thousands of zombies surrounding his sister’s little outpost, but in California they felt safe. Sure there was a border fence, and everyone had more than a few guns stashed away, but other than semi-regular patrols they just lived their lives. Most worked farms, but some of them like Diana couldn’t work at all. Folks just took care of them and didn’t quibble about jobs or money. It felt like a dream. Like a little patch of heaven on earth, for all that Gideon hadn’t bothered to find a preacher for his small utopia. Derek and Reid even had a whole room to themselves, with a bed big enough to fit two tall men. If it was a dream, he didn’t want to wake up.

And he didn’t have to, for the whole rest of that glorious summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ends year two, the cross country road trip from sea to shining sea and through at least one sea of corpses. I'm going to take a hiatus from this series while I do a better job of working out the plotting for part three. I don't want to leave people hanging between chapters the way I did with this fic, but I promise the general idea is there. Prentiss, Park, the vaccine and the connection of the surviving settlements will come one day, but I want to get it right so it's probably going to take a while..


End file.
